• Jerome R Lechien, Pierre Cabaraux, Carlos M Chiesa-Estomba, Mohamad Khalife, Jan Plzak, Stéphane Hans, Delphine Martiny, Christian Calvo-Henriquez, Maria R Barillari, Claire Hopkins, and Sven Saussez.
• COVID-19 Task Force of the Young-Otolaryngologists of the International Federations of Oto-rhino-laryngological Societies (YO-IFOS), Paris, France.
• Ear Nose Throat J. 2020 Nov 1; 99 (9): 579-583.

ObjectiveTo investigate the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) status of patients with initial sudden olfactory anosmia (ISOA) through nasopharyngeal swabs for reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis and to explore their olfactory dysfunctions with psychophysical olfactory evaluation.MethodsA total of 78 ISOA patients were recruited from April 6, 2020, to April 10, 2020, through a public call of University of Mons (Mons, Belgium). Patients benefited from nasopharyngeal swabs and fulfilled the patient-reported outcome questionnaire. Among them, 46 patients performed psychophysical olfactory evaluation using olfactory identification testing. Based on the duration of the ISOA, 2 groups of patients were compared: patients with olfactory dysfunction duration ≤12 days (group 1) and those with duration >12 days (group 2).ResultsIn group 1, 42 patients (87.5%) had a positive viral load determined by RT-PCR and 6 patients (12.5%) were negative. In group 2, 7 patients (23%) had a positive viral load and 23 patients (77%) were negative. The psychophysical olfactory evaluation reported that anosmia and hyposmia occurred in 24 (52%) and 11 (24%) patients, respectively. Eleven patients were normosmic. The viral load was significantly higher in patients of group 1 compared with those of group 2.ConclusionsCoronavirus disease 2019 was detected in a high proportion of ISOA patients, especially over the first 12 days of olfactory dysfunction. Anosmia is an important symptom to consider in the detection of COVID-19 infection.

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