Patients with long Covid regain sense of smell and taste with pioneering surgery
Doctors in London have successfully restored a sense of smell and taste in patients who lost it due to long Covid with pioneering surgery that expands their nasal airways to kickstart their recovery.Most patients diagnosed with Covid-19 recover fully.But the infectious disease can lead to serious long-term effects.About six in every 100 people who get Covid develop long Covid, with millions of people affected globally, according to the World Health Organization.Losing a sense of smell and taste are among more than 200 different symptoms reported by people with long Covid.
Now surgeons at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) have cured a dozen patients, each of whom had suffered a profound loss of smell after a Covid infection.All had experienced the problem for more than two years and other treatments, such as smell training and corticosteroids, had failed.In a study aiming to find new ways to resolve the issue, surgeons tried a technique called functional septorhinoplasty (fSRP), which is typically used to correct any deviation of the nasal septum, increasing the size of nasal passageways.This boosts airflow into the olfactory region, at the roof of the nasal cavity, which controls smell.Doctors said the surgery enabled an increased amount of odorants – chemical compounds that have a smell – to reach the roof of the nose, where sense of smell is located.
They believe that increasing the delivery of odorants to this area “kickstarts” smell recovery in patients who have lost their sense of smell to long Covid.Prof Peter Andrews, a senior consultant surgeon in rhinology and facial plastic surgery who led the research, said surgery increased the airway by about 30%, so airflow also increased by about 30%.“This study has shown impressive results – if we apply the principle of increasing the nasal or olfactory airway, we’re getting a reactivation of the sense of smell and then an improvement of the sense of smell.“With long Covid anosmia you’ve got patients, fundamentally, who can’t smell or smell very poorly, so we need to somehow wake them up.And this operation sort of does that.
“It sort of wakes up the olfactory mucosa and then it builds on it through the increased nasal airway – hitting that area, more odorants hitting that area – and we’re getting this impressive recovery in the majority of the patients.All patients we operated on improved.”In the trial, 12 patients had fSRP and a control group of 13 patients continued with smell training – sniffing the same scents repeatedly.All patients who had fSRP reported an improved sense of smell compared with none of the patients in the sniff test group, where 40% actually reported a worsening sense of smell.The results were published in the journal Facial Plastic Surgery.
One of the patients, Penelope Newman, 27, from south London, said her taste and smell had “almost returned to normal” after the operation.“Before I had the surgery on my nose, I had begun to accept that I would probably never be able to smell or taste things the way I used to.“Since the surgery, I have begun to enjoy food and smells the same way I used to.I can now cook and eat garlic and onions and people can cook for me too.I can go out to eat with my friends and family.
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Another Simple Favor review – supremely silly sequel serves more absurd twists
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Bill Dare obituary
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Whenever, in a weak moment, I find myself mindlessly scrolling on Instagram, it usually isn’t long before I encounter a compellingly fuzzy video of a band performing on a long-since-cancelled TV show: Shaun Ryder with a bowl cut swaying awkwardly to Happy Mondays’ Step On on a 1990 edition of Top of the Pops; or Cedric and Omar from At the Drive-In thrashing away to One-Armed Scissor on Later with Jools Holland; or riot grrrlers Huggy Bear mounting an impromptu feminist protest against the lads and ladettes of The Word after their performance of Her Jazz.On Instagram, X and TikTok there are tons of these accounts, dedicated to clipping and uploading live studio performances from the 80s, 90s and 00s, and saddos like me ready to lap them up (I won’t link to them here because I suspect lots of them might be violating copyright). The appetite for these old performances clearly hasn’t gone unnoticed by the TV networks that used to host them. Last week there was much excitement online as Paramount Plus added 50 episodes of MTV Unplugged to its platform, featuring everyone from Nirvana to Mariah Carey (though only, it seem, in the US – curse you, Paramount Plus!). In the UK the iPlayer continues to share vintage episodes of Top of the Pops at a steady clip, shortly after their BBC Four rebroadcast
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Jimmy Kimmel on Trump’s tariffs: ‘Can you believe we’re shaking down Canada?’
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Sole portrait of England’s ‘nine-day queen’ thought to have been identified by researchers
She was known as the “nine-day queen” and was used as a pawn in the ruthless ambition that defined the Tudor court. But for centuries, historians have struggled to find a single portrait of Lady Jane Grey that was painted during her lifetime.Now, research by English Heritage suggests a mysterious portrait depicts the royal who reigned over England for just over a week in the summer of 1553, and who was executed less than a year later.The charity says there is “compelling evidence” that the royal portrait of Grey was significantly altered after it was made, perhaps to depict the sitter as a Protestant martyr.By using infrared reflectography, English Heritage, working alongside the Courtauld Institute of Art and the dendrochronologist Ian Tyers, discovered that changes had been made to the sitter’s costume, including her sleeves, coif and the addition of a white scarf
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