[Effect of streptomycin on the hearing function]

Abstract

One of the main problems of the modern medicines within the last 10-15 years has been so-called drug disease. Toxic effect of the aminoglucoside antibiotics and streptomycin on the vestibular and auditory analysers is one of frequent and severe complications of their use. According to the author's observations treatment of 200 patients with streptomycin resulted in affection of their hearing in 40 to 80 cases. The ototoxicity was confirmed by audiograms, while the level of clinical signs and subjective complains did not always coincided with the audiograms. Audiometry should be performed at the beginning of the treatment and before the repeated courses of streptomycin therapy, and later it should be repeated during the treatment course every 10-15 days. Under the experimental conditions low doses of streptomycin used at early stages induced fine damages in the sensor cells of the cochlea which could be detected only histochemically.