The Role of Olfactory Training and Intranasal Corticosteroid to Improve Olfactory Function in Patients with Olfactory Disorder in Makassar

Abstract

Introduction: Olfactory disorders can cause a person to lose the ability to detect odors and have been shown to have a poor impact on the patient's quality of life. To date, there are no effective pharmacotherapies to improve olfactory impairment, but olfactory training (OT) for 12 weeks may be an option as a treatment strategy for olfactory impairment due to viral infection.

Objectives Olfactory disorders can cause a person to lose the ability to detect odors and have been shown to have a poor impact on the patient's quality of life. To date, there are no effective pharmacotherapies to improve olfactory impairment, but olfactory training (OT) for 12 weeks may be an option as a treatment strategy for olfactory impairment due to viral infection..

Methods: The research design was a randomized pre-post-controlled design consisting of 2 treatment groups. The study was conducted in November 2022 until the sample size was met. The study samples were patients who had olfactory disorder and met the inclusion criteria who also willing to undergo INS and OT therapy. The treatment group was divided into 2 groups, namely the control group (OT) and treatment group (OT + INS). Treatment assessment was performed with Sniffin sticks test. Statistical tests were performed using IBM SPSS v25. Statistical test results were significant if the p value was <0.05.

Results: A total of 31 samples (16 OT samples and 15 OT+INS samples) were obtained for this study. The mean age in the OT group was 36.06±17.57 and 37.47±10.39 for the OT+INS group (p = 0.790). There was no significant difference in gender (p = 0.809) between groups 1 and 2. There was no significant difference between the treatment group and the control group on day 1, week 3, and week 6 for both right and left noses (p>0.05). There were significant differences in sniffin stick test scores on day 1 and week 3 and on day 1 and week 6 in both group 1 and group 2 (p < 0.001). There was no significant difference in the change of sniffin stick test score between OT group and OT + INS group at week 3 and week 6 (p>0.05).

Conclusions: OT therapy and the combination of OT + INS are effective to improve olfactory function by increasing sniffin stick scores at week 3 and week 6. There was an improvement in olfactory function for patients with olfactory disorders in this study. However, in patients with OT and INS combination therapy had better sniffin stick score.