The AudioNotch Tinnitus Treatment Blog

Lidocaine patches are sometimes used for pain analgesia, such as for diabetic neuropathic pain. They can be applied locally to the skin and then diffuse into the affected area. There have been reports that intravenous administration of lidocaine can relieve tinnitus temporarily, but lidocaine isn’t the kind of drug that’s safe to be providing intravenously (hence the suggestion of a local system of administration, like a patch). However, I doubt that the patch would effectively diffuse into the cochlea (and I’m not even sure if the site of action is the cochlea itself or the actual CNS – i.e. the brain, in which case a patch near the ear would be useless).

In any event, I wrote about lidocaine as a tinnitus treatment here.