Accumulation of 14C-lidocaine in the inner ear. Preliminary clinical experience utilizing intravenous lidocaine in the treatment of severe tinnitus.

Clinical experience has demonstrated that intravenously administered local anaesthetics have a mitigating effect on severe tinnitus. In an attempt to gain some insight into the mechanism of this effect, autoradiography of the inner ear of young pigmented rats was performed after intravenous injection of 14C-lidocaine. Some accumulation of lidocaine was found in the modiolus, but almost none in the stria vascularis. A large accumulation was observed in other melanincontaining tissues, such as the hair follicles and uvea. The in vitro accumulation of 14C-labelled lidocaine adsorbed on melanin granules was low (12%) as compared with that of other drugs, such as kanamycin (89%) and chloroquine (85%). These autoradiographic results indicate that lidocaine has an effect upon the inner ear, in addition to its previously demonstrated effect on the CNS.