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Shingles is a viral infection that causes a painful rash. Although shingles can occur anywhere on your body, it most often appears as a single stripe of blisters that wraps around either the left or the right side of your torso.
Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus — the same virus that causes chickenpox. After you’ve had chickenpox, the virus lies inactive in nerve tissue near your spinal cord and brain. Years later, the virus may reactivate as shingles.
A shingles outbreak can also affect the facial nerve on either side. When this happens it is referred to as Ramsay Hunt Syndrome or Herpes Zoster oticus. This can cause facial paralysis as well as hearing loss in the affected ear.
Other common symptoms of Ramsay Hunt syndrome include:
- pain in your affected ear
- pain in your neck
- ringing noise in your ear, also called tinnitus
- hearing loss
- trouble closing the eye on the affected side of your face
- decreased sense of taste
- a feeling like the room is spinning, also called vertigo
- slightly slurred speech
As in almost all cases, early identification and treatment is critical to manage most medical conditions.
Do you want to book an appointment with one of our Audiologists?