Doctors in India have extracted 232
teeth from the mouth of a 17-year-old
boy in a seven-hour operation.
Ashik Gavai was brought in with a
swelling in his right jaw, Dr Sunanda
Dhiware, head of Mumbai’s JJ
Hospital’s dental department, told the
BBC.
The teenager had been suffering for 18
months and travelled to the city from
his village after local doctors failed to
identify the cause of the problem.
Doctors have described his condition
as “very rare” and “a world record”.
“Ashik’s malaise was diagnosed as a
complex composite odontoma where a
single gum forms lots of teeth. It’s a
sort of benign tumour,” Dr Dhiware
said.
“At first, we couldn’t cut it out so we
had to use the basic chisel and
hammer to take it out.
“Once we opened it, little pearl-like
teeth started coming out, one-by-one.
Initially, we were collecting them, they
were really like small white pearls. But
then we started to get tired. We
counted 232 teeth,” she added.
The surgery, conducted on Monday,
involved two surgeons and two
assistants. Ashik now has 28 teeth.
Describing Ashik’s case as “very rare”,
Dr Dhiware said she had “not seen
anything like this before in my 30-year
career”, but said she was “thrilled to
get such an exciting case”.
“According to medical literature
available on the condition, it is known
to affect the upper jaw and a
maximum of 37 teeth have been
extracted from the tumour in the past.
But in Ashik’s case, the tumour was
found deep in the lower jaw and it had
hundreds of teeth.”
Ashik’s father Suresh Gavai was
quoted by the Mumbai Mirror as saying
that his son complained of severe pain
a month ago.
“I was worried that it may turn out to
be cancer so I brought him to Mumbai,”
he said.