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Effects of olfactory training: a meta-analysis

2017; European Rhinologic Society; Volume: 55; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4193/rhin16.195

2589-0085

Agnieszka Sorokowska, Edda Drechsler, Maciej Karwowski, Thomas Hummel,

Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies

The neural plasticity of the olfactory system o ers possibilities of treatment in terms of stimulation of the sense of smell, and different studies have suggested e ectiveness of smell training, i.e., daily exposition to certain odors.To obtain reliable and precise estimates of overall treatment bene t on the olfactory function, we meta-analyzed the e ects of smell training reported in 13 previous studies.We analyzed the smell training e ectiveness across three di erent olfactory abilities -smell identi cation, discrimination and threshold for odor detection.We found a signi cant, positive e ect of olfactory training for all olfactory abilities, with large e ects of training on identi cation, discrimination and TDI-score and small-to-moderate e ect in the case of threshold for odor detection.Interestingly, the pattern of results di ered across Sni n' Sticks subtests depending on the origin of participants' smell disorder, and the smell training duration in uenced its e ectiveness in the case of identi cation and the TDI score.Although the exact mechanism of olfactory recovery following the smell training still requires further investigation, our meta-analysis sho-wed that such training should be considered an addition or alternative to existing smell treatment methods.