Olfaction in Surgical Education: An Overlooked Dimension of Clinical Reasoning

Modern surgical education increasingly emphasizes visual diagnostics, imaging, simulation, and protocol-driven decision-making. Yet surgery has historically been a multisensory discipline in which olfactory cues contributed meaningfully to clinical reasoning. From infected wounds to anastomotic leaks, smell can provide early diagnostic information, although it is rarely acknowledged in written surgical texts or explicitly incorporated into structured curricula. This Perspective argues that olfaction represents a form of tacit knowledge in surgical training-one that persists in practice but receives limited formal attention in educational design. While not a substitute for objective diagnostics, sensory awareness forms part of embodied clinical reasoning. Surgical education may benefit from recognizing, rather than overlooking, this dimension of clinical expertise.