A team of doctors from the UK managed to render the smell and taste of several patients suffering from long-lasting Covid (Long Covid), through a pioneering surgery.
Several patients regained their smell and taste after Long Covid. Photo archive
The loss of the sense of smell and taste are among the more than 200 different symptoms reported by people with long covid and some of the most common. While some patients managed to regain their two senses in time, there are quite a few who had lost all hope.
Here, a team of doctors in the UK has managed to restore the sense of smell and taste in patients who lost it because of Covid-19, with the help of pioneering surgery, which extends their nasal airways to accelerate their recovery.
Surgeons at the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) healed several patients with Long Covid who had this problem for more than two years and for which other treatments, such as “learning” smell and corticosteroids, had failed.
In a study meant to find new ways to solve the problem, the surgeons tried a technique called functional septorinoplasty (FSRP), which is usually used to correct the deviation of the nasal septum, increasing the dimension of nasal passages.
This increases the air flow in the olfactory region, at the top of the nasal cavity, which controls the smell.
Doctors explained that surgery has allowed a larger amount of odorants – chemical compounds that have a smell – to reach the point where the sense of smell is located and I believe that this intervention “starts” the recovery of the smell in patients with long -lasting Covid.
Prof. Peter Andrews, the surgeon who led the research, said that the surgery increased the airways by about 30%, so that the air flow increased by about 30%.
“This study showed impressive results; If we apply the principle of growth of the nasal or olfactory respiratory tract, we obtain a reactivation of the sense of smell and then an improvement of the sense of smell. In the case of long -lasting Covid anosmia, we have patients who, in essence, cannot smell or smell very weak, so we have to “wake” them. And this operation in a way does this ”, said Prof. Peter Andrews, quoted by The Guardian.
