The proportion of pseudo-halitosis patients in a multidisciplinary breath malodour consultation.

AIM: To report the data from a multidisciplinary bad breath consultation in Germany.

MATERIALS AND

METHODS

In this cross sectional study, 407 patients attending a bad breath consultation were examined by a specially trained dentist, with an ENT-specialist, an internist, and a psychologist on call.

RESULTS

All patients reported suffering from bad breath but only 72.1% showed detectable signs of breath malodour. Within this group, 92.7% revealed an oral cause, 7.3% revealed an extra-oral cause. Within the group without malodour, 76.3% had received prior diagnostics and treatments from other doctors, whereby 36% had received one or more gastroscopies and 14% had undergone an ENT operation. In only ten cases had an organoleptic evaluation of the putative malodour been performed.

CONCLUSION

Our data reveal that breath malodour is mainly of oral origin and that patients with pseudo-halitosis are frequently not diagnosed correctly by doctors, resulting in a considerable amount of over-treatment.