Foul smelling saliva (breath)!

[sotalol]

I'm a medical student unfortunately without proper health insurance or sufficient funds to visit a dentist regularly.  

CC: I've noticed that my saliva smells extremely foul.  

Hx: My upper right molar had developed a large cavity and I ended up in an emergency room for root canal.  At that time, the dentist partially removed the nerve and placed a temporary filling to relieve the pain and requested that I return for proper cap placement etc.   Since it was too costly for me to afford, it's been over a year since I've had that temporary filling in there.    Also I have another large cavity developing in my lower molar on the same side.
I used to have mild gingivitis on my gums (lower incisor area) but I was able to get rid of that with proper brushing/flossing.  Besides that I have no other health problems other major health problems.

Q's:  Can temporary filling or the other open cavity be the cause of the foul smelling breath?  I even went out and bought a tongue scraper but so far it has not helped.    I'd appreciate it if you can please give me any advice as to what the cause might be and what precautions and actions I should take to resolve the issue.

Thank you.

[mammo]

Avoid bridges as much as possible.  It ruins the teeth they are attached to because they get filed down, and food and bacteria gets lodged inder the bridge (I know cause it happened to me) and I flossed under the bridge everyday just like the dentist said.

[SugaLuv]

Hi Sotalol!

It could very well be the temporary crown that is causing the smell.  I would know, I had a "very expensive permanent", porcelain crown on my root canal, and it still ended up smelling like nobody's business after several years.  It took me months to hunt down the smell because I was not having any pain.  The smell got so loud people could smell it 6 feet away from me!  It turned out to be a split tooth up under the crown, that was not visible on x-ray because the crown was in the way.  A sort of healing tissue called "granulation tissue", scar tissue, is what I think was really causing the foul odor. If I were you, I would just get both teeth pulled (its much less expensive than root canals, & in my opinion, safer).  That way, when you finish medical school, & can afford it, you can just have bridges put in the empty spaces.   It won't come back to bite you years on down the road, like it did me!!  Besides, it's not healthy to have decayed teeth (nerves removed or not, crowns or not) in your mouth, that could infect your entire body, and screw up your health.  

[mammo]

While there may be other things that can cause the bad breath, as you probably know, you want to look at the first obvious cause, which is a decaying tooth.  Anything that is decaying stinks.  I don't think it would be your temporary filling.  You really don't need a tongue scraper, just brush your tongue thoroughly with your toothbrush.