Bloated tables with dead rows skew performance metrics and waste storage

Accumulation of dead rows from UPDATEs and DELETEs causes table bloat, making performance metrics appear worse than actual database health and wasting disk space.

Run VACUUM and ANALYZE regularly to reclaim storage from dead tuples and update table statistics. Monitor n_dead_tup in pg_stat_user_tables. Configure autovacuum appropriately for workload. Rebuild indexes when needed.