The assesmenT Of sense Of smell in a ROmanian nORTheRn pOpulaTiOn: nORmaTive values using “sniffin’sTicks” OlfacTiOn TesT

Objective. A modern and well-developed chemosensory nasal test in Europe is the “Sniffin’Sticks” with normative data collected from various countries. The test contains penlike odor devices for testing the olfactory threshold, discrimination and identification. The final result of the test consists in a composite thresholddiscrimination-identification (SDI) score. The study aims to obtain normative data for the “Sniffin’Sticks” olfactory test in Romania. Material and Methods. 148 subjects (73 women, 75 men; mean age 44.6 years) with a reported normal olfactory function were included in this prospective clinical trial. The “Sniffin’Sticks” test was used to assess the olfactory function. Results. Normative olfactory data were obtained in the normal Romanian population in relation with age and sex. The older subjects performed evaluation tasks less in all the tests and females performed better than males. Conclusion. The “Sniffin’Sticks” combined olfactory scores of the healthy Romanian subjects are comparable with the normative data presented in other studies in different populations.