[Drug therapy of sensorineural hearing loss--critical remarks]

Recent placebo-controlled clinical double-blind trials failed to confirm any beneficial effects of rheological and vasodilative drugs or hemodilution in treatment of inner ear diseases. Furthermore, experimental studies have recently shown that cochlear blood flow was only temporarily improved during infusion of blood flow promoting drugs and cochlear oxygenation was deterioated with most of these drugs. Therefore treatment of basic or accompanying diseases is currently the only effective therapy and prophylaxis and general practitioners as well as internal and neurological specialists should be involved in therapeutical approach of inner ear disorders.