Anosmia is the inability to smell, which can be caused by various factors, including head trauma and sinus infections. It can lead to ageusia and put individuals at risk of not detecting dangers such as gas leaks. Anosmia can be temporary or permanent, congenital or acquired, and take various forms. Doctors use smell tests to diagnose it.
Anosmia is a condition in which people lack a sense of smell. It can be caused by a variety of factors, from temporary blockage of the nose due to a sinus infection to head trauma. While this condition may seem irritating, yet ultimately trivial, anosmia can actually have a profound effect on someone’s life. People with anosmia often experience ageusia, the inability to taste, because smell plays such an important role in taste perception. They are also put at risk by their inability to smell spoiled food and gas leaks, among other dangers that are often easily apparent to people with an intact sense of smell.
There are a number of conditions linked to anosmia. Hyperosmia, for example, is an extremely sensitive sense of smell, while parosmia causes people to misinterpret odors, detecting something unpleasant when the smell is neutral or pleasant. In phantosmia people perceive smells where there are none, in a sort of olfactory hallucination.
In some cases, the anosmia is purely temporary. Many of us have experienced a temporary decline in sense of smell with a big cold or sinus infection, for example, and when our nose clears again, our sense of smell returns. Other times, the condition is caused by a blockage in the nose that requires medical attention, such as a tumor. Head trauma can also damage your sense of smell, as can some diseases.
When anosmia is congenital, it means someone was born without a sense of smell. Congenital anosmia can be difficult to diagnose because it may take some time for a child to realize that he or she is losing a vital sense and parents may not know when a child is preverbal. Acquired anosmia has an onset later in life.
Sometimes anosmia takes an unusual form: In specific anosmia, someone is unable to detect certain smells, but can smell everything else without difficulty. Specific anosmia appears to have a genetic component, although people can also become desensitized to particular odors through prolonged exposure.
To diagnose anosmia, doctors use familiar smells and waft them into the nose, or ask patients to use scratch-and-sniff cards. If the patient has difficulty detecting or identifying odors, he is considered to have anosmia. Once the condition is diagnosed, it is important to get to the cause, to ensure that the patient receives the appropriate treatment.
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