ABSTRACT
Objective: To evaluate olfactory function and clinical–neurological characteristics in a group of patients with mild head trauma.
Methods: A total of 352 patients with MTBI underwent olfactory function evaluation. The site of head trauma, loss of consciousness <20 min, memory loss, subjective presence or absence of olfaction and other clinical, neurological and radiological aspects were evaluated and compared with the olfactory dysfunction.
Results: A total of 33.5% patients enrolled in the study had an olfactory dysfunction. Eighty-seven percent of the patients had a diagnosis of anosmia whereas 13% had a diagnosis of hyposmia. Statistical analysis did not show a correlation between radiologically detected head lesions and different types of olfactory dysfunction (p > 0.05). Besides, no difference between head lesion site and different olfactory dysfunction was reported (p = 0.5). Regarding olfactory sub-tests a low detection threshold was present in these patients.
Conclusion: The possibility of olfactory dysfunction should be considered in any case of MTBI appears differently than expected, a minor head injury causes anosmia much more frequently than hyposmia.
Declaration of interest
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.