Management of post-COVID olfactory disorder: Is olfactory training effective on recovery of olfactory mucosal function?

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The number of patients presenting with sudden onset and persistant anosmia and other olfactory disorders, which is a finding related to coronavirus disease has been increased considerably. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the efficacy of olfactory training in patients with persistent anosmia after Covid-19 infection.
 METHODS: Forty-six patients who applied for sudden loss of smell after Covid-19 infection and still had olfactory disorders were included in the study. Odor threshold and odor identification tests were performed on the patients before the treatment. As olfactory training, 4 scent bottles included the following groups: phenyl ethyl alcohol, eucalyptol group, citronellal group and eugenol group were given to patients and patients instructed to sniff the odors twice a day, for 5 seconds each, when they woke up in the morning and before they went to sleep and make a daily check that they applied the treatment. Patients who continued the training for 12 weeks were re-evaluated with the odor threshold test and odor identification test.
 RESULTS: The pre-training mean olfactory threshold score of the patients was 1.65±1.74, and the post-training mean olfactory threshold score was 3.89±2.73. It was observed that the olfactory threshold scores increased significantly after the olfactory training (p

Vohalni trening kot učinkovita podpora pri rehabilitaciji voha pacientov z vohalno disfunkcijo

“…Da vohalni trening izboljša prepoznavanje in razločevanje vonja so si enotni zgolj nekateri avtorji (Qiao et al, 2019;Hosseini et al, 2020;Choi et al, 2021, Zhang et al, 2022. Mahmut et al (2021) in Demir et al (2022) namreč menijo nasprotno: vohalni trening ne izboljša zmožnosti za zaznavo vonja, ampak zgolj njegovo prepoznavanje. Choi et al (2021) so ugotovili, da se je vohalna funkcija izboljšala v skupini, v kateri so za trening uporabljali vsakdanje vonjave.…”