Has COVID-19 removed your sense of smell?
Pediatricians are recommending children who have had COVID-19 participate in treatment that involves training their noses to detect scents again.
Smell and taste is part of everyday life, but what happens when they go away?
An increasing number of children have experienced loss of smell due to COVID-19. Now, there’s a special training to potentially bring it back.
Dr. Kenny Chan is chairman of the Department of Pediatric Otolaryngology at Children’s Hospital Colorado. He said they use four scents. Kids will be asked to smell each bottle for 10 seconds twice a day.
“The four odors that we have chosen include orange, lavender, peppermint and eucalyptus,” Chan told KCBS Radio.
The clinic studies children for three months to see if their sense of smell improves.
“There will be children who cannot smell any of the four, versus [some who can] smell three of the four,” he noted. “Obviously, if they can smell four of the four there is probably no smell dysfunction.”
Chan said they use a standardized test on children ages 5 and younger.
The doctor mentioned that although children are much less likely to develop COVID-19 or suffer its consequences than adults, the number of pediatric patients has steadily grown.
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