Nearly one-quarter of affected patients report lack of recovery at 60 days<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
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WEDNESDAY, Jan. 6, 2021 (HealthDay News) — The majority of patients with mild COVID-19 versus patients with moderate-to-critical forms report loss of smell, with 75 to 85 percent of all patients recovering olfaction at two months after infection, according to a study published online Jan. 6 in the Journal of Internal Medicine<\/em>.<\/p>\n Jerome R. Lechien, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Mons in Belgium, and colleagues investigated the prevalence of and recovery from olfactory dysfunction (OD) in COVID-19 patients according to disease severity. The analysis included 2,581 COVID-19 patients identified from 18 European hospitals (March 22 to June 3, 2020) and followed for two months after infection; 1,363 patients with OD completed evaluations.<\/p>\n The researchers found that the prevalence of OD was significantly higher in mild forms of COVID-19 (85.9 percent) versus moderate-to-critical forms of the disease (4.5 to 6.9 percent). Nearly one-quarter of patients with OD (24.1 percent) did not subjectively recover olfaction at 60-day follow-up. Self-reported OD lasted a mean of 21.6 days. On objective olfactory evaluation, hyposmia\/anosmia occurred in 54.7 percent of patients with mild forms of COVID-19, while 36.6 percent of patients with moderate-to-critical forms of the disease experienced hyposmia\/anosmia. Among anosmic\/hyposmic patients, at 60 days and six months, 15.3 and 4.7 percent, respectively, did not objectively recover olfaction. Higher baseline severity of objective olfactory evaluations strongly predicted persistent OD.<\/p>\n “Considering both subjective and objective data, we may suggest that the 60-day recovery rate ranges from 75 percent to 85 percent,” the authors write.<\/p>\n