SNIFFIN STICKS - OLFACTORY PERFORMANCE ASSESSED BY THE COMBINED TESTING OF ODOR IDENTIFICATION, ODOR DISCRIMINATION AND OLFACTORY THRESHOLD

'Sniffin' Sticks' is a new test of nasal chemosensory performance base d on pen-like odor dispensing devices. It comprises three tests of olf actory function, namely tests for odor threshold (n-butanol, testing b y means of a single staircase), odor discrimination (16 pairs of odora nts, triple forced choice)and odor identification (16 common odorants, multiple forced choice from four verbal items per test odorant),After extensive preliminary investigations the tests were applied to a grou p of 104 healthy volunteers (52 female, 52 male, mean age 49.5 years, range 18-84 years) in order to establish test-retest reliability and t o compare them with an established measure of olfactory performance (t he Connecticut Chemosensory Clinical Research Center Test, CCCRC). Per formance decreased with increasing age of the subjects (P < 0.001). Co efficients of correlation between sessions 1 and 2 were 0.61 for thres holds, 0.54 for discrimination and 0.73 for identification. Butanol th resholds as obtained with the CCCRC increased as a function of age; th is relation to the subjects' age was not found for the CCCRC odor iden tification task. The test-retest reliability for CCCRC thresholds was 0.36, for odor identification it was 0.60. It is concluded that 'Sniff in' Sticks' may be suited for the routine clinical assessment of olfac tory performance.