Orange. Eucalyptus. Lavender. Peppermint.
Doctors at Colorado Children ‘s Hospital and Seattle Children’ s Hospital use odors like this to treat children who have lost their sense of smell to Covid-19. Parents attend clinics and go home with a set of essential oils for their baby to sniff twice a day for three months. Clinicians review their progress on a monthly basis.
The Smell Disruption Clinic at Colorado Children’s Hospital was allowed to open on March 10th. To date, five children have been abducted and one recorded. Seattle Children plans to open their program in the spring.
The treatment, called “smell training,” has been clinically proven to be effective in adults. However, clinicians said, there is almost no data on whether the method works in children.
While children are significantly more likely to develop Covid or its effects than adults, the number of parent-child patients has been steadily growing. More cases means more children show symptoms of dementia called “Covid long.” These complaints include loss of odor.
The association between coronavirus infections and odor disturbances in adults is well documented in both patients with short-term and long-term infections. However, scientists are still unsure how many people will develop this problem or how the virus triggers it. Various research teams have found a finding that may explain the phenomenon, including inflammation and disorder in the structures that support the cells that are responsible for olfactory function. .
But little research has focused on odor disturbances in children, said Dr. John McClay, a pediatric ear, nose, and throat surgeon in Frisco, Texas – not to mention those who caused Covid. That’s because children rarely develop these issues, he said, and the coronavirus novel has been like that – a novel.
“Everything is so new,” said McClay, who also chairs the American Academy of Otolaryngology’s education committee. “You can’t hang your hat on anything.”
It works for adults. Will it work for children?
There is one intervention for adults who lose their breath – whether it is due to a brain disorder such as Alzheimer’s, a tumor that blocks nasal airflow or any number of viruses, including Covid – on olfactory training.
It usually works like this: Doctors test a patient’s sense of smell to establish a baseline. Adults are then given a set of essential oils with specific scents and instructions on how to train the nose at home. Patients usually sniff each oil twice a day for several weeks to months. At the end of the training, doctors re-test them to see if they have improved.
Dr Yolanda Holler-Managan, a pediatrician and associate professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said she does not see why this method would not work for children as well. In all age groups, the olfactory nerve can regenerate every six to eight weeks. As the nerve heals, training can help strengthen the sense of smell.
“It’s like helping a muscle grow stronger again,” she said.
Late last spring, when doctors began to detect odor and taste issues in adults with Covid, Dr. Kenny Chan, the pediatric ear, nose and throat specialist who was monitoring him, realized the new clinic in Colorado, that this could be an issue with children as well.
Dr. came. Kathleen Sie, head of head and neck surgery at Otolaryngology at Seattle Children ‘s Hospital, became aware of the problem when she received an email from someone at a local emergency care center. After reading the message, Sie called Chan to talk about it. The conversation suddenly slipped into her head on a scent training clinic at her facility.
Both clinicians need to address the challenges that “smell training” can pose to the children. To begin with, some young patients may not know how to recognize specific odors used in adult experiments – spices such as cloves, for example – because they are too young to frame an information frame. to have, McClay said.
As an approach, Chan replaced some potentially recognizable scents with some scents.
It is also difficult to find children who are disturbed by smell. Many with Covid are asymptomatic, while others may be too young to explain what they are suffering from or recognize what they are missing.
Nevertheless, McClay said, the potential benefit of the simple treatment outweighs the cost and challenges of setting it up for children. Adult scent training packs sell for less than $ 50.
“There’s no data out there that says this will do anything,” said No. “But if one doesn’t care to look into this issue, this issue will not. to be solved. ”
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