WORLD JOURNAL OF ADVANCE
HEALTHCARE RESEARCH

Lubna Mohammed Enad* and Prof. Ehab Taha Yaseen

ABSTRACT

Background: Anosmia is one of the most frequent encountered symptom in the last two years due to COVID-19infection, each patient had a different outcome. This study was an attempt to identify the predictors of prognosisof anosmia for each patient according to specific criteria gathered in one scoring system. Aim of the study: Tocreate a specific scoring system to predict the prognosis of anosmia in covid-19 patients. Patients and method:This descriptive, prospective cross-sectional study was conducted at Otolaryngology Outpatient Clinic of Al-Yarmouk Teaching Hospital between (October 2020- October 2021), 100 patients with anosmia due to COVID-19infection of both gender whose age >15 years with ATT(alcohol threshold test) between 4-6 have enrolled in thisstudy, while patients with other forms of olfactory dysfunction (hyposmia , cacosmia) due to COVID-19 infectionor with pre-existing smell problem, or has nasal pathology (such as polyposis, severe septal deviation…etc.) hadexcluded from the study. a detailed history (with psychological assessment had been done using DistressThermometer score), full ENT examination and olfactory test (using ATT) were done. All patients have beenfollowed up for 6 months using ATT to assess prognosis. Results: Age range was between (18-62) years with themean age of 36.5±11.9. The study showed that age group ≥ 50 years, male gender, smoking, patients withassociated comorbidities, low socioeconomic status and long duration of anosmia have affected the prognosisadversely. In addition to that patients who had mild form of COVID-19 infection and patients with devastatingpsychological distress have more chances to develop persistent anosmia. Lastly, patients with higher initial scoresof ATT predicted lower improvement. Conclusion: Certain parameters (e.g. age, gender, smoking, duration ofanosmia, etc.…) found to affect the prognosis either in a positive or negative way. Using these parameters, wecreate a scoring system to predict the prognosis of anosmia due to COVID-19 infection.