Zara Patel, MD

05/31/2025

🦠As our nation’s healthcare administrators recommend removing COVID19 vaccination for pregnant women and children (groups long recognized by the medical community as vulnerable because of suppressed or not yet completely developed immune systems), millions of people in the US and around the world continue to get infected with the disease and suffer the long term consequences of having had the infection.

💔Although the majority of these people who lose their smell and taste from the infection will regain it on their own without intervention, at least 15-25% will have permanent loss - imagine never tasting another meal or drink for the rest of your life, imagine never smelling your child/partner/parent/ ever again, imagine never again smelling the sea air or the fresh scent of the forest or the comforting aroma of coffee in the morning.It is devastating to these individuals.

⭐️For the first time ever, we have found an intervention that may actually help prevent this loss of smell and taste from becoming permanent if taken early in the first week after diagnosis - a well known treatment for the infection itself - Paxlovid.

⚡️In the early days of the pandemic, we recommended this intervention to prevent major illness, hospitalization and death. Now that the symptoms are not as severe, physicians can still use this to help prevent LongCOVID disability like loss of smell and taste, along with other symptoms it has shown to prevent in other studies.
Importantly - in this era of mistrust in science - our study was NOT funded by any drug company!
🎙️Spread the word!

🔗Link to article:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40444408/

🤗Congratulations Esther Wang on getting this publication of ours over the finish line!


Stanford OHNS
Stanford Medicine
Stanford University

05/22/2025

🙏🏼Thanks Amber Luong and The American Rhinologic Society for featuring our work on the latest It Out podcast from the International Forum of Allergy and Rhinology - the highest impact journal in all of !
💉🩸We discuss the Long term outcomes of PRP injections for Post-Viral Smell Loss.
🔗Link is here for those that want to take a listen:
https://www.scopeitoutpodcast.com

Visit the Treatment Options tab at our website
https://sicstl.stanford.edu for more information

Stanford OHNS
Stanford Medicine
Stanford University

05/06/2025

So excited to announce our launch of the
⚡️Stanford Initiative to Cure Smell and Taste Loss!⚡️
I have been investigating the underlying causes of smell loss and treating patients with smell loss for the last fifteen years. Now, with evidence showing that smell loss could not only be the earliest sign of neurodegenerative diseases such as ’s and ’s, but in fact the olfactory cortex could be where the degeneration actually begins, research in this area is even more important and urgent!

Visit our website

https://sicstl.stanford.edu

to learn more!

If you have the capacity to donate to this important research, please visit the “Make a Gift” tab, and make a donation in honor of yourself or a loved one - each individual gift gets us that much closer to both treatments for smell and taste loss as well as early screening for dementia and potential treatments for AD and PD as well!
We are committed to moving forward and leading the way in science and medicine - help us if you can!


Stanford OHNS
Stanford Medicine
Stanford University

03/14/2025

📻🎙️My interview about treating smell loss on NPR with Joe and Terry Graedon of the People’s Pharmacy will broadcast this weekend!
Anyone can listen on Saturday , March 15th at 7 a.m. EST and on Sunday, March 16th at 3 p.m. EST on their computer or smartphone at wunc.org, or on one of the 200 NPR radio stations across the country that broadcast it. By March 17 the podcast will be up on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

🔗Link to listen:

https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/articles/show-1422-the-science-of-smell?utm_source=The%20People%27s%20Pharmacy%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=4ade79197f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_03_14_03_30&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_7300006d3c-4ade79197f-220755773

⏰ A reminder for those suffering with post-viral ( or otherwise) parosmia (smell distortion) that you have had for greater than 6 months but less than two years, email smellstudy@stanford.edu to enroll in our next clinical trial.

Stanford OHNS
Stanford University
Stanford Health Care
NPR

02/15/2025

👏🏼👏🏼Kudos to Chrissi Kelly for sharing her story with The Guardian and to Claire Hopkins for taking the leap to be the first to begin offering injections to patients to treat smell loss in the UK!
(Link to full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/feb/15/anosmia-smell-loss-hope-for-sufferers )

😎Those of you who follow me have seen our work to vet and test for and . From our initial pre-pandemic pilot study, to the randomized controlled trial on induced smell loss, to the most recent long term follow up post-viral cohort study, to the recent case report on improving post-traumatic loss 45 years out from injury.
🕰️ Time to start incorporating this into your practice everyone - my smell clinic has a year and a half wait list and I can’t take care of all these patients myself!

🙏🏼 All I ask of my fellow physicians is that you are completely honest and transparent with your patients - you need at least three injections to see a significant difference, it does not help everyone, and there is wide variability in the amount of improvement - but it does help the majority of patients we have tried this in!

Recruiting now for our randomized controlled trial to test this treatment option for - contact smellstudy@stanford.edu

Stanford OHNS
Stanford Medicine
Stanford University
Stanford Health Care

01/17/2025

Always such an honor to have your peers recognize your work and dedication to excellent patient care.

To all my colleagues who have entrusted their patients to me for sinus surgery, sinus and nasal tumor resection, sinus cancer treatment, skull base surgery, smell loss and more, thank you for your confidence in me! 🙏🏼❤️
.



Stanford OHNS
Stanford Health Care
Stanford University

01/09/2025

🤖Does it feel like AI can do anything? There have been multiple studies showing AI performing better than human doctors at diagnostic and patient counseling tasks. But is this always the case?

❌In a niche surgical sub-sub-specialty like rhinology — it appears the answer is - not quite yet!
Click the link below to read our study and find out why.

Kudos to Alice Huang for getting this study across the finish line to publication! And thanks to all the co-authors that worked on this with us!

This doesn’t mean that AI, including ChatGPT and others, has not already begun to make inroads and be of incredible use to us as physicians - it has!

Anyone that follows me knows of the incredible success we’ve had utilizing AI to differentiate certain benign tumors from cancer in the sinuses, over multiple studies we have presented and published.

You can also read the recent study I was a co-author on, led by Maxime Fieux, MD-PhD in France, showing that ChatGPT could be utilized for creating patient education materials of high quality. And you can read the perspective on AI and Otolaryngology I was a co-author on, led by my colleagues at Mount Sinai Alfred Marc Calo Iloreta Jr. and Satish Govindaraj discussing how ChatGPT could revolutionize our field.

But keep that little grain of salt on hand whenever you’re asking it for medical advice - especially when it’s not a primary care or urgent care kind of question - looks like you still need us around for a little while. 😉

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39776758/

Stanford OHNS
Stanford Medicine
Stanford Health Care
American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery

01/03/2025

📈The benefit of PRP intranasal injections, found at 3 months out to give 12x odds of improving smell after post-viral loss, goes up to 15x odds at one year. The improvement has an even better trajectory the further out we study it, compared to no PRP.
🔗Link below to the hot off the presses publication.

🙏🏼Thank you to Maxime Fieux, MD-PhD , Carol Yan , Sophie Jang, and Bruna Castro for your work on this study!

🔍Our next area of exploration regarding PRP intranasal injections and the olfactory system will be directed at parosmia.
For anyone out there who is suffering from parosmia, or distortion of smell and taste, and can travel to Stanford for possible treatment, please email smellstudy@stanford.edu to learn how you can enroll!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39740091/

Stanford OHNS
Stanford Medicine

12/31/2024

💫Happy Holidays to all my friends and colleagues! Most of you know me through my work as a surgeon, researcher, and educator. What you may not know, is that I’m also a Founder!
👩🏻‍💼👩🏻‍💼Two years ago we co-founded Olfera and through the immense dedication and perseverence of Parnian Lak and Renaud Renault as well as Kelvin Cooper and Brian Kopec, I am more excited than ever at what the next year holds for our startup.

👃🏼You all know I love talking about olfaction and my passion for helping patients with loss of smell and taste. But have you ever thought about the untapped potential of the olfactory system as a pathway to the brain?

🧠 What is one of the greatest limitations of drug delivery to the brain? The blood-brain barrier. Even with traditional intranasal drug delivery, that bypasses the GI tract and metabolism, those drugs still have to be absorbed into the bloodstream and make their way to the brain.

🔓Our innovative brain-on-a-chip platform, for the first time, has the potential to circumvent that barrier. Using the olfactory system itself - the only part of our central nervous system with easily accessible neurons - we will work to target a multitude of brain diseases - from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, to epilepsy and other seizure disorders, to migraines, depression, and more.
💡Parnian Lak and I will be at the upcoming J.P. Morgan Biotechnology and Healthcare conference to kick off the new year - we hope to see many of you there!
Happy New Year! 🥳

12/17/2024

🌤️It has been a relief for most people around the world to be able to move on from the pandemic and return to a sense of normalcy within both their personal and professional lives.
💔Unfortunately there remain millions of patients who have been unable to move on, who remain affected by their infection, and continue to have symptoms.

Here .healthcare at the Stanford Long COVID Collaborative, we continue the work to help these patients. With partners spanning multiple departments .med , we collectively work to drive forward research, patient care, and education for both patients and for other providers in our community.
🔗Educational videos are up now. You can find the link to the Loss of Smell and Taste video at the link here:

https://youtu.be/12lT5zjDTFk

09/04/2024

September is World Sinus Health Awareness month!
Pondering awareness lead me to thinking about awareness on other levels in our lives.
I had the opportunity to share my thoughts regarding education, patients, and politics in this month’s American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery bulletin.

An excerpt:
“ Of course, a good physician does not blame the patient for thinking the way they do or accuse them of being liars or “sheep” for believing what another physician or health provider may have told them. They simply try and educate the patient as to why their opinion is different.

This daily practice of understanding should have created an army of empathetic physicians in our country, ready to consider evidence rationally, and collegially debate our differences, whether in science or politics. Yet, somehow, we cannot even agree on what “good evidence” is, or what “facts” are anymore, outside of our medical practices.”

The link to the full piece is here - hope you enjoy!

https://bulletin.entnet.org/aaohns-programs/article/22917584/perspective-education-patients-and-politics



Stanford OHNS
Stanford Medicine
Stanford University

06/26/2024

🤓After investigating the use of PRP (platelet-rich plasma) in my patients for smell loss, we were curious about who else in otolaryngology is using this, for what indications, and has it proven to be as effective on other areas of our field?
👏🏼👏🏼Alireza Sharifi and Ali Kouhi did a wonderful job collecting and grading the existing data out there with me and putting together this systematic review for all of you!
📓If you’re interested in either using PRP for your patients or doing research in this field - this review is for you!
🔗Link to article: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38914822/




Stanford OHNS
Stanford Medicine

PRP and PRF are safe, easy to use, and potentially effective treatment options for multiple otolaryngology pathologies. As an autologous material, there is no risk of immune reaction, and thus has been selected as a viable treatment option by many otolaryngologists. Larger studies would be helpful t...