Chapter 13: Olfactory disorders
Decreased sense of smell can lead to significant impairment of quality of life, including taste disturbance and loss of pleasure from eating with resulting changes in weight, and difficulty in avoiding health risks such as spoiled food or leaking natural gas. Recent epidemiological
reports have shown that despite fairly low self-reported prevalence of these disorders in large population studies, when validated smell identification or threshold tests are used they reveal quite a high prevalence of hyposmia and anosmia in certain groups, especially the elderly. Several
different pathophysiological processes, such as head trauma, aging, autoimmunity, and toxic exposures, can contribute to smell impairment, with distinct implications concerning prognosis and possible treatment. Otolaryngologists are most likely to see this symptom in patients with chronic
rhinosinusitis, and this now appears to be caused more by the mucosal inflammation than by physical airway obstruction.
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 May 2013
- Access Key
- Free content
- Partial Free content
- New content
- Open access content
- Partial Open access content
- Subscribed content
- Partial Subscribed content
- Free trial content