Article Text
Abstract
Loss of sense of taste (hypogeusia) involving a part of the tongue can follow acute stroke. We describe a woman with a small right thalamic acute infarct causing bilateral (mainly left-sided) hypogeusia. Her problem remains sufficiently severe to cause distress and nutritional deficit. The anatomical distribution of her problem—cheiro-oral syndrome with concurrent hypogeusia—suggested involvement of adjacent relevant thalamic fibres. We address key considerations in examining taste in research and in practice and discuss issues to address in people with hypogeusia, including swallow deficits, psychological elements of the poststroke condition and nutrition. Dietetic management should include optimising taste stimuli and nutritional support. Introducing more detailed taste assessments into standard practice would likely improve stroke unit care.
- oral medicine
- stroke
- smell
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors FMU has taken a lead in researching and writing about the implications of the case, while AS has taken a lead in assessing the patient whose symptoms the article reports.
Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally reviewed by Tom Hughes, Cardiff, UK.
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Transient hemiageusia in cerebrovascular lateral pontine lesions
- Bilateral hypogeusia in a patient with a unilateral paramedian thalamic infarction
- Insula stroke: the weird and the worrisome
- Bilateral hypogeusia caused by a small lesion in the lower midbrain tegmentum
- Elucidating symptoms of COVID-19 illness in the Arizona CoVHORT: a longitudinal cohort study
- Symptom presentation of SARS-CoV-2-positive and negative patients: a nested case–control study among patients calling the emergency medical service and medical helpline
- Aetiological relationships of nasal mucus cyclic nucleotides in patients with taste and smell dysfunction
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging study on dysphagia after unilateral hemispheric stroke: a preliminary study
- Photochemically induced thalamus infarction impairs cognition in a mouse model
- New variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease presenting with loss of taste and smell