The behaviours of three types of hot-hole injections in ultrashort channel lightly doped drain (LDD) nMOSFETs with ultrathin oxide under an altating stress have been compared. The three types of hot-hole injections, i.e. low gate voltage hot hole injection (LGVHHI), gate-induced drain leakage induced hot-hole injection (GIDLIHHI) and substrate hot-hole injection (SHHI), have different influences on the devices damaged already by the previous hot electron injection (HEI) because of the different locations of trapping holes and interface states induced by the three types of injections,i.e. three types of stresses. Experimental results show that GIDLIHHI and LGVHHI cannot recover the degradation of electron trapping, but SHHI can. Although SHHI can recover the device’s performance, the recovery is slight and reaches saturation quickly, which is suggested here to be attributed to the fact that trapped holes are too few and the equilibrium is reached between the trapping and releasing of holes which can be set up quickly in the ultrathin oxide.