Hearing Loss, Tinnitus Common in Survivors.

• Position: CANCER

While children receiving chemotherapy routinely undergo hearing tests, adults do not, and a study by the University of California-San Francisco reports that significant hearing issues often occur among adult survivors of the most common forms of cancer. The researchers found that more than half the survivors In their study who had been treated with chemotherapy experienced significant hearing problems. Previously, it was unknown how frequently survivors of breast, gastrointestinal, gynecologic, or lung cancer suffered clinically meaningful levels of hearing loss and tinnitus (ringing in the ear).

"While hearing loss associated with the administration of platinum drugs was reported in adults with testicular and head and neck cancer, our study is the first to demonstrate that hearing loss and tinnitus are highly prevalent problems in survivors of the four most common types of cancer," says first author Steven W. Cheung, professor of otolaryngology.

"Another important and previously unknown finding from our study is that these high rates of hearing loss and tinnitus occur not only with platinum drugs, but with another class of chemotherapy drugs called taxanes. Given that platinum--and taxane-containing chemotherapy regimens are the ones most commonly used to treat the majority of...