Validation of the Connecticut olfactory test (CCCRC) adapted to Brazil

Olfactory changes are quite common in the population, causing a significant impact on the quality of life. Documentation of the olfactory function is essential for the diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of patients with inflammatory diseases of the upper airways, neurodegenerative diseases or viral infections. Among the different existing smell tests, the CCCRC is an inexpensive test, easy to apply, but it has not yet been evaluated on a large scale in the Brazilian population. To validate the CCCRC smell test, after adaptation for the Brazilian population, evaluating the performance of healthy volunteers and the stability of the test in retests. In this study, we carried out a cultural adaptation of the CCCRC test to Brazil. To validate and determine the normality scores, we applied the test to 334 healthy volunteers, aged >18 years of age. The retest was also carried out in up to four weeks on 34 additional volunteers to assess validity of the results. When evaluating the participants’ performance, normosmia and mild hyposmia values were obtained in more than 95% of them. Women (58.4%) showed better accuracy than men (41.6%): p