Goethe-University, Medical Faculty, Institute of Clinical Pharmacology, Theodor Stern Kai 7, 60590 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology ITMP, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60596 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Chem Senses. 2024 Jan 1;49. doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjae008.
Clinical assessment of an individual's sense of smell has gained prominence, but its resource-intensive nature necessitates the exploration of self-administered methods. In this study, a cohort of 68 patients with olfactory loss and 55 controls were assessed using a recently introduced olfactory test. This test involves sorting 2 odorants (eugenol and phenylethyl alcohol) in 5 dilutions according to odor intensity, with an average application time of 3.5 min. The sorting task score, calculated as the mean of Kendall's Tau between the assigned and true dilution orders and normalized to [0,1], identified a cutoff for anosmia at a score ≤ 0.7. This cutoff, which marks the 90th percentile of scores obtained with randomly ordered dilutions, had a balanced accuracy of 89% (78% to 97%) for detecting anosmia, comparable to traditional odor threshold assessments. Retest evaluations suggested a score difference of ±0.15 as a cutoff for clinically significant changes in olfactory function. In conclusion, the olfactory sorting test represents a simple, self-administered approach to the detection of anosmia or preserved olfactory function. With balanced accuracy similar to existing brief olfactory tests, this method offers a practical and user-friendly alternative for screening anosmia, addressing the need for resource-efficient assessments in clinical settings.
个体嗅觉的临床评估受到了重视，但因其资源密集型的特点，需要探索自我管理的方法。在这项研究中，我们评估了 68 名嗅觉丧失患者和 55 名对照组患者，使用了最近引入的嗅觉测试。该测试涉及根据气味强度对 2 种气味剂（丁香酚和苯乙醇）进行 5 种稀释度的排序，平均应用时间为 3.5 分钟。排序任务评分，计算为分配和真实稀释顺序之间 Kendall's Tau 的平均值，并归一化到 [0,1]，确定了评分≤0.7 时为嗅觉丧失的截断值。该截断值标记了随机排序稀释度获得的分数的第 90 百分位数，用于检测嗅觉丧失的平衡准确性为 89%（78%至 97%），与传统的嗅觉阈值评估相当。重测评估表明，分数差异为±0.15 作为嗅觉功能临床显著变化的截断值。总之，嗅觉排序测试是一种简单、自我管理的嗅觉丧失或嗅觉功能正常的检测方法。该方法具有与现有简短嗅觉测试相似的平衡准确性，为筛查嗅觉丧失提供了一种实用且用户友好的替代方法，满足了临床环境中资源高效评估的需求。
