**8. Conclusions**

The appearance of new drugs to treat ever more conditions is an inevitable and welcomed progress of medical and pharmaceutical sciences. However, assuring the drug safety in terms of hearing disability is difficult, and it often requires very long and regular intake periods, which are outside of regular phase I, II or III clinical trials. As for the duration of phase IV (the postmarketing surveillance trials), which is usually set for 2 years, perhaps it could be extended specifically for the monitoring of audiological conditions.

The ototoxicity of prescription or over-the-counter drugs is a global problem. Collaboration between audiologists or otologists and other healthcare providers is necessary to protect the patient's auditory health. Auditory consultations ought to be a routine during the treatment of patients with viral hepatitis C or B receiving interferons and ribavirin or HIV-positive individuals taking anti-reverse transcriptase drug cocktail. Moreover, patients undergoing solid organ transplantation should be audiologically monitored. The option of audiological care for children treated for any of the above infectious diseases or undergoing transplantation should be presented to their parents. Lastly, frequent users of painkillers and recreational drugs should be informed about the risks of the medications they are reaching for every day.

During the unavoidable drug therapies, preventive means such as mitochondrial protection and supplementation during the drug treatment and audiological monitoring as well as fitting the patients with hearing aids or cochlear implants, could help to keep the hearing healthy or at least to restore it to some degree.

The good condition of hearing is as important as that of heart, lung or other organs. Informing the community about ototoxicity and keeping up to date with the case reports and other scientific communications may help to save the sense of hearing.
