Olfactory Changes in Patients of Dementia / 대한이비인후과학회지

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Dementia has emerged as a major healthy challenge, not only for clinicians but for society as a whole. So, there is a growing need for study of dementia. Evaulating the patients with dementia, examination of the sense of smell is not routinely performed. However, one of several neurologic changes include alterations in olfaction. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to evaluate the value of olfactory function test in demented patients as diagnostic tool. MATERIALS AND METHOD: We studied the olfactory functions in 35 patients with dementia of the Alzheimer's type(DAT) and 20 patients with vascular dementia(VD) and compared with normal controls(n=30). These subjects were divided according to the Mini-Mental State Examination(MMSE). We used the T & T olfactometer for the olfactory function test. RESULTS: In the group of questionable DAT, the detection and recognition threshold were 0.25+/-0.95, 2.38+/-1.87, in the group of definitive DAT, 1.51+/-1.52, 3.91+/-1.55 and in the group of definitive vascular dementia, 2.03+/-1.48, 4.53+/-1.45. But, in the normal controls, the detection and recognition threshold was 0.66+/-0.90, 1.55+/-0.81 respectively. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that olfactory function test are valuable in demented patients as diagnostic tool, but not specific in DAT group and that early detection of DAT is possible by olfactory function test.