Olfactory rehabilitation after total laryngectomy

Abstract

Patients with total laryngectomy lose the ability to breathe through the nose and develop a smelling disorder. I compared the effect of olfaction rehabilitation for a group of laryngectomy patients before and after treatment. The subjects consisted of eleven laryngectomized persons who had been treated at our hospital. I evaluated the olfactory state using a T&T olfactometer before and after the intervention. The training was delivered as the NAIM method. The detective threshold for the sense of smell improved significantly after the training, and the cognitive threshold showed a trend toward improvement. In addition, a significantly inverse correlation was observed between the postoperative period and the improvement level after undergoing olfactory rehabilitation. The patients' sense of smell substantially improved after undergoing olfactory rehabilitation. As a result, olfactory rehabilitation should be started as early as possible after laryngectomy from the viewpoint of olfactory maintenance.