A Modified Version of “Sniffin’ Sticks” Odor Identification Test: The Romanian Cultural Adaptation

Abstract

Objective. The cultural adaptation of the Sniffin’Sticks battery test, a well- validated olfactory test in the German speaking population, before using it in the current medical practice in a country with a different cultural background.

Materials and Methods. We tested 248 subjects in two stages. The first stage included 50 healthy subjects aged 13 to 79 years who were tested with Sniffin’Sticks odor identification test with the exact translation of the items and descriptors from German to Romanian and searching for the problematic items as to their understandability. In the second stage the modified list with items and descriptors after linguistic adaptation was tested in a representative Romanian population of 198 healthy subjects aged 13 to 79 years. Our results were correlated with a group of 198 Germans of similar age and sex distribution from the German normative data of Sniffin’Sticks.

Results. In the first assessment of the Romanian subjects with the original list of items and descriptors the result was an odor identification less then 70% for 5 items (lemon, liquorice, turpentine, apple, anis). The new Romanian list with items and descriptors showed a significantly increased identification percentage for all the problematic items.

The identification ability of the Romanian subjects showed a similar behavior regarding the age and gender differences with the German subjects. Our results show a significant correlation between the both groups.

Conclusion. The result of the study provides cultural adaptation of Sniffin’ Sticks olfactory identification test for the Romanian population.