2023-11-20 17:55:08
Updated Monday, November 20, 2023 – 16:55
The new method, which includes an injection, will be presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America
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A team of researchers has managed to restore the sense of smell for the first time to a small group of patients with persistent Covid, through a procedure “minimally invasive” of ten minutes guided by image.
The new method, which includes an injection, will be presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
Parosmia, a condition in which the sense of smell stops working correctly, it is a symptom of Covid-19.
About 60% of patients has suffered it and although the majority recovered their sense of smell, in some patients with persistent Covid, the problem persists for months, or even years, which has a negative impact on their appetite and quality of life.
“Post-covid parosmia is frequent and increasingly recognized.” “Patients can develop aversion to food and drink that they previously enjoyed,” explains the lead author of the study, Adam C. Zoga, professor at Jefferson Health in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Additionally, having an altered sense of smell can affect the perception of odors, and some patients may suffer from fantosmiaan “olfactory hallucination” that causes people to detect smells that do not exist.
To evaluate a possible treatment, the team studies benefits of blocking the stellate ganglia.
These are ganglia, which are part of the autonomous nervous system that regulates involuntary processes such as heart rate, blood pressure, breathing and digestion, are nerves located on both sides of the neck that send certain signals to the head, neck, arms and part of the chest.
The team blocked the stellate ganglion injecting an anesthetic directly on one side of the neck to stimulate the regional autonomic nervous system.
In less than 10 minutes
This procedure, which is minimally invasive, lasts less than 10 minutes and does not require sedation or analgesiahas been used with varying degrees of success to treat various conditions, such as cluster headaches, phantom limb pain, Raynaud and Meniere syndromes, angina pectoris, and cardiac arrhythmia.
“Parosmia has previously been described as a rare disorder that occurs after brain traumabrain surgery, stroke, viral syndromes and with some head and neck tumors,” Zoga said. “We were not totally sure that the procedure would work for parosmia.”
The study recruited 54 patients with post-covid parosmia in whom all available therapies had failed, and followed up on 37 of them.
Through a computed tomographythe scientists placed a spinal needle at the base of the neck for injection into the stellate ganglion and added a small dose of corticosteroid to the anesthetic.
“The initial patient had a tremendously positive outcome, Almost immediatelywith continued improvement to the point of resolution of symptoms at four weeks,” Zoga said.
After injection, 37 patients (65%) were followed up; from them, 22 symptoms improved in less than a week and of these 22, 18 reported significant progressive improvement a month later.
After three months, there was a average symptom improvement of 49% (range 10% to 100%) among the 22 patients.
26 patients returned for a second injection administered on the other (contralateral) side of the neck, about six weeks later.
Although the second injection was not effective in patients who did not respond to the first, 86% of patients who reported some improvement after the first injection had additional improvement after the contralateral injection and No complications or adverse effects were recorded.
To date, all treatments have failed but this injection “it works”concludes Zoga.
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