Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment of Olfactory Dysfunction Seok Hyun Cho Hanyang Med Rev 2014;34:107-115 http://dx.doi.org/10.7599/hmr.2014.34.3.107 Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Hanyang University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea pISSN 1738-429X eISSN 2234-4446 Olfactory dysfunction is a relatively common disorder that is often under-recognized by Correspondence to: Seok Hyun Cho Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head both patients and clinicians. It occurs more frequently in older ages and men, and decreases and Neck Surgery, Hanyang University patients’ quality of life, as olfactory dysfunction may affect the emotion and memory func- Hospital, 222 Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, tions. Three main causes of olfactory dysfunction are sinonasal diseases, upper respiratory Seoul 133-792, Korea Tel: +82-2-2290-8583 viral infection, and head trauma. Olfactory dysfunction is classified quantitatively (hypos- Fax: +82-2-2293-3335 mia and anosmia) and qualitatively (parosmia and phantosmia). From a pathophysiologi- E-mail:
[email protected] cal perspective, olfactory dysfunction is also classified by conductive or sensorineural types. All patients with olfactory dysfunction will need a complete history and physical examina- Received 17 April 2014 Revised 23 June 2014 tion to identify any possible or underlying causes and psychophysical olfactory tests are Accepted 3 July 2014 essential to estimate the residual olfactory function, which is the most important prognos- This is an Open Access article distributed under tic factor. CT or MRI may be adjunctively used in some indicated cases such as head trauma the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution and neurodegenerative disorders.