How to diagnose Anosmia? - Dr. Sreenivasa Murthy T M

Diagnosis is largely based on the history, which is what the patients tells us, namely for how long the patient has been suffering from impaired smell or sense of smell. Was it secondary to any infections or secondary to any allergies, secondary to patient being on certain drugs long term, certain neurological conditions which the patient has, or was secondary to any trauma? Did the patient undergo any surgery after which the patient lost the sense of smell, especially nasal surgeries or skull based surgeries. These are the things we would elicit it, try to find out from the patient. Once the history gives a fair amount of information, then we rely upon nasal endoscopy to rule out any obstructive cause of impaired smell. Many at times, the patients can come to us with hardly any findings at all and nothing is there in the history, then we need to rule out neurological conditions and intracranial problems which would cause impaired smell. So we generally recommend that the patient undergoes MRI brain which would cover even the part of the sinuses. That way we would get some information. Majority of the causes for impaired smell are correctable and rectifiable but unfortunately a few of them will render them anosmic or total loss of sense of smell, are not correctable.