Loss of smell after turbinate reduction

Turbinate reduction changes tissue inside the nose to improve airflow. After the procedure, the lining may be swollen and dry, and crusts or prescribed dressings can interfere with air reaching the smell-sensing region. A stuffy feeling does not by itself show that the procedure has failed. Infection, allergic rhinitis, chronic sinusitis, a common cold, COVID-19, or Long COVID can also affect smell, so the timing and accompanying symptoms matter.

Follow the operating clinician’s instructions about saline sprays, rinses, cleaning, activity, and medicines. Use only the rinse fluid and technique recommended for you; never force water through a painful or tightly blocked nose. Avoid smoke, dust, and nose-blowing if your instructions restrict them. Do not remove crusts, packing, or scabs with cotton buds unless your clinician has shown you how. Keep follow-up appointments so healing and airflow can be checked.

Contact the surgical team promptly for heavy or ongoing bleeding, fever, increasing facial pain, foul-smelling drainage, marked swelling, breathing difficulty, or a sudden deterioration in smell. Seek urgent help for confusion, weakness, severe headache, vision changes, or clear fluid continuously dripping after a head or nasal procedure. A gradual change during early healing may be expected, but your own clinician should set the recovery expectations.

Ask whether the swelling or crusting looks typical, when the nasal passages should be examined, and whether any spray or rinse should be continued. Tell the clinician whether smell is absent or distorted, whether taste has changed, and whether you have pain, bleeding, discharge, or fever.