High systemic gentamicin levels and ototoxicity after implantation of gentamicin beads in a 70-year-old man—a case report

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the source is credited. DOI 10.3109/17453670903487032 Gentamicin beads are used for musculoskeletal infections. Gentamicin is released gradually from the beads, and high gentamicin concentrations are achieved only locally. Side effects of gentamicin are rarely to be expected with gentamicin beads since only low amounts of gentamicin are released from the beads, resulting in extremely low serum concentrations of the antibiotic (Septopal SPC, Wahlig et al. 1978, Walenkamp et al. 1986). Only one case of prolonged raised gentamicin serum levels from gentamicin beads has been described to date, but no adverse effects were reported in that case (Walenkamp and Vree 1981). We present another case with ototoxicity also.