The Association of Smell and Taste Dysfunction with COVID19, And Their Functional Impacts

The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was appeared at the end of 2019 in wuhan city in china. Covid-19 has high ability of transmission from human to another human, and due to its fast spread globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that Covid-19 is pandemic disease on March 11, 2020. Several articles have reported many common ENT-related symptoms as an early sign of COVID19. To measure the prevalence of insomnia and dysgeusia in COVID19 patients in Saudi Arabia and investigate their functional and psychological effects on patients. This study evaluated the impact of insomnia and dysgeusia on COVID-19 patients' quality of life using the short version of the Olfactory Disorders-Negative Statements (sQODNS) Questionnaire. It was done from 5 June to 30 July 2020, in the Eastern region of Saudi Arabia. A total of 274 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patients were participated. The most common ENT-related symptoms were headache 69%, insomnia 65.3%, and dysgeusia 64.6%. Interestingly, insomnia can greatly affect patients' daily life, as around 37.6% of our patients had problems with taking part in daily activities, 42% felt isolated, 68.1% had changes in appetite, 51.4% had more stress, and 28.2% had increased anger secondary to loss of smell. In Addition, 62% (110) of patients who lost their taste declared that their daily activities were affected. ENT-related symptoms are one of the most COVID19 manifestations. The duration of both insomnia and dysgeusia is an important contributing factor on the patients' functional & psychological state as it may prolong their isolation period. Therefore, Otolaryngologists considered the first-line physicians for many of Covid-19 patients, which makes us at higher risk to be infected with Covid-19 too. It is also particularly important for Otolaryngologists to develop a management guideline to reduce the duration and severity of all ENT-related features.