Cureus Anosmia and Ageusia as the Only Indicators of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

[tetano]

Cureus


. 2020 May 1;12(5):e7918.
doi: 10.7759/cureus.7918.
Anosmia and Ageusia as the Only Indicators of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)


Qian Zhang ¹ , Khine S Shan ² , Shahrzad Abdollahi ¹ , Travis Nace ³



Affiliations

• PMID: 32494532
• PMCID: PMC7263711
• DOI: 10.7759/cureus.7918

Abstract

The patient is a 60-year-old woman with a history of vertigo and seasonal allergies who presented to the hospital with the chief complaint of headache. Radiological findings were negative for intracranial abnormalities. The headache was due to trigeminal neuralgia. She had concurrent complaints of anosmia and ageusia without fever, respiratory symptoms, or obvious risk factors. However, it was determined to test the patient for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection despite extremely low clinical suspicion. Unfortunately, she was found to be COVID-19 positive after she was discharged from the hospital while she remained asymptomatic. There is currently a lack of published case reports describing COVID-19 patients with the sole symptoms of anosmia and ageusia in the United States of America.

Keywords: ageusia; anosmia; atypical coronavirus; coronavirus; covid-19; loss of smell; loss of taste; novel coronavirus.