Objective olfactory testing in patients presenting with sudden onset olfactory dysfunction as the first manifestation of confirmed COVID-19 infection

jerome lechien; pierre cabaraux; carlos chiesa-estomba; mohammad khalife; jan plzak; stephane hans; delphine martiny; christian Henriquez; Claire hopkins; sven saussez

Recently, eminent clinicians observed abrupt loss of smell COVID-19 infected individuals, particularly from Britain, the US, France, South Korea, China, Germany, and Iran. They collectively reinforced its potential application as a marker that could be used in the first line of diagnostics in patients presenting with COVID-19 symptoms. The Hopkins team published the first case report and case series suggesting that sudden olfactory dysfunction, should be considered highly suspicious for SARS-CoV-2 [4, 6] . Moreover, our study group recently showed, that anosmia was present in 86% in a series of 417 patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 disease, and appeared before other symptoms in 11.8% [5] . In the same way, Kaye et al. described in a series of 237 patients that anosmia was noted in 73% of subjects prior to COVID-19 diagnosis and was the initial symptom in 26.6% [11] . In a larger series of 1,420 mild to moderate COVID+ patients, our Bayesian analysis identified that reported anosmia was a key symptom in COVID-19 infection with 70.2% of cases (Lechien et al., submitted).