Dentists extracted 526 teeth from the mouth of a 7-year-old boy who was complaining of jaw pain, calling it the first case documented worldwide in which such a large number of teeth was found in an individual.
The hospital in Chennai, which carried out scans and X-rays of the boy’s mouth, found a sac embedded in his lower right jaw full of abnormal teeth.
The rare surgery was conducted on July 11 but doctors needed time to examine the teeth and confirm their findings before making them public, Pratibha Ramani, head of the oral and maxillofacial pathology department at the Saveetha Dental College and Hospitals said.
“The parents had noticed the swelling when the boy was three years old but it remained undiagnosed because the abnormal teeth embedded in the jaw were not visible,” she said.
“A total of 526 teeth, ranging from 0.1mm to 15mm were removed by our team. All the pieces were teeth, since they had a crown, root and enamel,” Ramani added.
“We had to drill down into the top (of the lower jaw), make a window and remove the sac,” said Ramani. “As it (the sac) was going deeper into the tissue the size of the teeth was becoming very small.”
Despite the large number of teeth inside his mouth, the boy was not in too much pain, she said.
“The only thing which was bothering him was that the tooth on that side had not erupted, it was empty, and (he had) occasional pain, and there was slight swelling that was increasing in size.”
“It was reminiscent of pearls in an oyster,” the doctors said in a statement after the meticulous five-hour surgery to remove the many minute and a few medium-sized and larger teeth, collectively weighing 200g.
The surgery turned out well as the boy, with a “healthy” count of 21 teeth, was discharged three days after the procedure.
The boy suffered from compound composite odontoma, a benign tumour. They are hoping to study them further by carrying out genetic tests.
“We had to take a lot of counselling sessions with him for him to undergo surgery. We have a very good counselling team who have expertise in dealing with kids,” said Ramani.
It is not known whether the condition was caused by genetic or environmental factors, she added.
Ramani said this was the first case documented worldwide where so many teeth were found in an individual. In 2014, a government hospital in Mumbai extracted 232 teeth from the jaw of a teenager.