i have recently been experiencing something that feels like a beat in either one of my left and right ear. the pulsating feeling or sound is not constant; they come and go. they usually appear every one to three hours but sometimes there are days where they don’t appear at all, should i be concerned? i am scared that this could be the emergence of another AVM but i was told from my last angiogram that my AVM has sealed off from the successful cyberknife that i under go in 2016 and in 2020 it was confirmed that is dead from the angiogram, what could be causing this recent pulses in my ear? is it just stress or something else
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I would certainly follow up. I have pulsatile tinnitus, but not always, as well. They do not believe mine is associated to my AVM but more of an unknown cause. I had it before my bleed as well, and have had successful Gamma Knife. I certainly would recommend following up, its always great to determine if there is an identifiable cause. Take Care, John.
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Aiming to help… I had pulsatile tinnitus as a harbinger of my AVM, in fact it is the whole reason I sought out my doctor.
My PT was very faint initially (c. Oct 2015) and grew louder such that in April 2016, after some concerted googling, I found a page on the American Stroke Association website about AVMs, DAVFs, pulsatile tinnitus and stroke and it was that which propelled me to the doctor.
It took a further 4 months to see an ENT, two more to get an MRI reported on and another month to be referred to neurosurgery: I did indeed have an AVM, specifically a DAVF which was discharging into my right transverse sinus. It was sufficiently strong a flow by the April that I could hear it in both ears.
I had an embolization operation in April 2017 and at that point I lost the pulsatile tinnitus but gained a really loud normal pulse which spooked me just as much as the PT!
So what is the difference? What did my pulsatile tinnitus sound like? Initially it was like a very faint whoosh sound, once a second, a bit like saying a child’s “f” sound quietly. It changed over time in terms of volume such that by the Feb or Mar 2017 it was like having the washing machine on pump-out next to my head 24 hours a day and I got other effects as the flow increased: in particular I got “dizzy”, especially when trying to lie down at night.
So if any of this sounds familiar, then maybe you’ve got something like me and it would be worth investigating.
What did my “loud normal pulse” sound like? It was different. It had the usual double thump-thump of a heartbeat, every second, 24 hours a day! It was about as loud! I was worried about it but so far as I remember, it was much more present at night with my head on the pillow than it was in normal life. What the heck was that about? I don’t know but I ascribed it to the doctor having fixed my AVM/DAVF with a sudden change by glueing it up. Post op, my blood pressures in the back of my head were back where they were supposed to be: high pressure in my arteries and low pressure through all of my veins & venous sinuses. I took it that an artery that had perhaps been silent running past my ear was suddenly up to the pressure that it was supposed to be and (hyper vigilant to noises in my head) I was busy listening to it.
I got checked out a few times over the year and a half post op and the doc’s constant refrain was, “I think you just need to get used to the new plumbing: resume normal life” [and put this all behind you].
So if your pulsatile tinnitus sounds more like a regular pulse, the double-thump of a normal pulse, it may be like mine and be that you’re busy listening to the noises in your head a little too much.
In July 2016, while waiting for that referral to the ENT guy, my pulsatile tinnitus got to be loud enough (and in fact it was back-inflating some veins on the outside of my head). I found another webpage that suggested one could record pulsatile tinnitus (if one is “lucky”!) by pressing your mobile phone microphone to the relevant place. It is fair to say that the ENT consultant diagnosed me by using a stethoscope and plotting over my head until he landed on the same just-right-of-centre spot on the back of my head.
This was my recording of my pulsatile tinnitus:
You may need to download the audio before finding a player to play it. Some of the noise is simply the microphone moving against my hair.
So, if your pulsatile tinnitus sounds a bit like this, then maybe you’ve got something similar to me. If all of this sounds different from what you’re experiencing then it might still be pulsatile tinnitus because I’ve only my own experience to go by, or it may not be pulsatile tinnitus at all.
Hope this helps. Feel free to ask anything.
Very best wishes,
Richard
About 10 months ago, I started having some form of what I thought was tinnitus. It mostly didn’t have a pulse, but did the same thing - come & go fairly randomly
That’s how I scored another angiogram - but, everything checked out. Yet, I still get it sometimes.
I’d suggest getting it checked out - I remember I definitely didn’t want to at the time