Health & Medicine
232 'Teeth' Removed from Growing Tumor Found in Jaw of 17-Year-Old (Video)
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Jul 25, 2014 01:36 PM EDT
Doctors in India were not quite prepared for what happened when they opened up a teenager's jaw on Monday. Seventeen-year-old Ashik Gavai, who had noticed a swelling in his face since June, was hosting a benign tumor that contained over 200 teeth.
Gavai's parents decided to take him to Mumbai for further medical assistance when village doctors were unable to determine the exact culprit of the painful swelling in his jaw.
Also known as a complex composite odontoma that's usually found in the upper jaw, the health issue can result in the production of excessive numbers of teeth.
Surgery for tumor removal began at the Sir J.J. Hospital in Mumbai at the beginning of the week. However, doctors first failed to properly remove the tumor, and so they had to use the "basic chisel hammer to take it out," according to the Telegraph.
"Little pearl-like teeth started coming out, one by one," said health officials, via the BBC. "Initially, we were collecting them, they were really like small white pearls. But then we started to get tired. We counted 232 teeth."
The surgery took seven hours with help from four medical staff at the hospital.
"We thought it [would] be simple surgery but once we opened [him up] there were multiple pearl-like teeth inside the jaw bone," said head of dentistry at the hospital, Sunanda Dhivare-Palwankar, via the AFP.
Fortunately, surgeons were able to successfully remove the tumor while keeping Gavai's jaw intact. He now has 28 teeth. Typically, humans carry 32.
Want to learn more about the process Gavai went through? Check out this video, courtesy of YouTube.
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First Posted: Jul 25, 2014 01:36 PM EDT
Doctors in India were not quite prepared for what happened when they opened up a teenager's jaw on Monday. Seventeen-year-old Ashik Gavai, who had noticed a swelling in his face since June, was hosting a benign tumor that contained over 200 teeth.
Gavai's parents decided to take him to Mumbai for further medical assistance when village doctors were unable to determine the exact culprit of the painful swelling in his jaw.
Also known as a complex composite odontoma that's usually found in the upper jaw, the health issue can result in the production of excessive numbers of teeth.
Surgery for tumor removal began at the Sir J.J. Hospital in Mumbai at the beginning of the week. However, doctors first failed to properly remove the tumor, and so they had to use the "basic chisel hammer to take it out," according to the Telegraph.
"Little pearl-like teeth started coming out, one by one," said health officials, via the BBC. "Initially, we were collecting them, they were really like small white pearls. But then we started to get tired. We counted 232 teeth."
The surgery took seven hours with help from four medical staff at the hospital.
"We thought it [would] be simple surgery but once we opened [him up] there were multiple pearl-like teeth inside the jaw bone," said head of dentistry at the hospital, Sunanda Dhivare-Palwankar, via the AFP.
Fortunately, surgeons were able to successfully remove the tumor while keeping Gavai's jaw intact. He now has 28 teeth. Typically, humans carry 32.
Want to learn more about the process Gavai went through? Check out this video, courtesy of YouTube.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone