Evaluation of the first symptom and evaluation of olfactory and taste disorders during the course of the disease and its related factors in patients with COVID-19

Considering the increasing incidence of Covid-19, recognizing the clinical features of this disease, including the identification of the first symptom of the disease and smell, taste and their affecting factors, seems to be an effective step in early diagnosis of the disease. The aim of this study was to evaluate the degree of olfactory and taste disorders and its related factors in definitive patients with COVID-19.

This study is a case series study in which 158 patients with Covid-19 were included in the study. The data are based on a researcher-made checklist and completed with the examination of an ENT specialist. After entering the data into SPSS-21 software, central indices and dispersion were calculated and examined the relationships between variables with chi-square, t test and Regression.

In these study, olfactory disorders were observed in 37 patients (23.4%) and taste disorders in 47 patients (29.7%). first symptom appeared in 66 cases (41.8%) fever, 31 cases (19.6%) cough, 27 cases (17.1%) sore throat, in 20 cases (12.7%) olfactory, 9 cases (5.7%) taste disorders, Three cases (1.9%) were reported decreased level of consciousness and two cases (1.3%) nausea.

In this study, COVID 19 patients showed a wide range of clinical and nonspecific symptoms, which seems to be one of the significant clinical manifestations of olfactory and taste disorders that may occur before any other symptoms in patients. Therefore, considering the importance of isolating patients to prevent disease transmission is better to give the necessary training and advice to the community.