Bad breath
presence of unpleasant odors in exhaled breath
Bad breath, also known as halitosis, fetor oris, oral malodour and putrid breath, is a symptom in which a noticeably unpleasant breath odour is present. It can result in anxiety among those affected. It is also associated with depression and symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder.
The concerns of bad breath may be divided into genuine and non-genuine cases. Of those who have genuine bad breath, about 85% of cases come from inside the mouth. The remaining cases are believed to be due to disorders in the nose, sinuses, throat, lungs, esophagus, or stomach. Rarely, bad breath can be due to an underlying serious medical condition such as liver failure, ketoacidosis, or fecal vomiting. Non-genuine cases occur when someone complains of having bad breath, but other people cannot detect it. This is estimated to make up between 5% and 72% of cases.
The treatment depends on the underlying cause.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bad breath” is presence of unpleasant odors in exhaled breath. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through breath, presence and unpleasant, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16408. The Library of Congress control number is sh85016699. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bad breath” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.