gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: The Sniffin’Sticks test is a very know psychophysical test in German speaking population and a cultural adaptation in the population of a country is mandatory before clinical use.

Methods: We tested in total 200 healthy subjects in two stages. First stage, where 50 subjects were tested using the exact translation of all the items and descriptors of the Sniffin’Sticks with identification of the non familiar items and descriptors (16 items and 42 descriptors in the identification test). Second stage, a modified list after linguistic changes with items and descriptors was used for identification test, in this group were included 150 healthy subjects. Identification ability is expressed with percentages correct items. Percentages lower than 70% were considered as not acceptable like in literature and the terms used (items and descriptors) as problematic. All the results were correlated with a sample of 150 Germans of similar age and sex distribution from the German normative data of Sniffin’Sticks. Fully otorhinolaryngological examination with nasal endoscopy and none of the subjects had major olfactory disturbance.

Results: The use of the initial list showed decreased odor identification (<70%) of 4 items (anis, turpentine, liquorice, cinnamon). After the appropriate changes the results of the modified list presented significantly increased identification of all problematic items. Identification ability of Romanian population showed significant correlation with the German study group having similar behavior regarding age and gender differences.

Conclusions: This study provides cultural adaptation of the Sniffin’Sticks olfactory identification test and normative data for the Romanian population.