Treating Sensorineural Hearing Loss: Recent Advances in Inner Ear Drug Delivery

This review aims to provide historical, present, and future drug deliveries for treating inner ear disorders. Systemic delivery, such as antibiotics and steroids for the inner ear, was the basis on which current drug delivery systems and devices have been researched and developed. Researchers and clinicians had to develop and deliver drugs locally due to adverse effects caused by drugs systemically. Intratympanic method of antibiotics and steroid delivery has been common; however, newer techniques such as microcatheter implantation, hydrogels, nanoparticles, and intracochlear implants are being investigated successfully. Recently advances in microfluidic and microsystems technology have applied medications directly into the inner ear. This technology will also be adopted to deliver gene therapy, RNA interference technology, and stem cell therapy by clinicians in the future.