TN: Chennai doctors extract 526 teeth from sever-year-old boy's mouth

In a staggering development, doctors have extracted 526 teeth from the mouth of a seven-year-old boy in a rare surgery performed at Saveetha Dental College and Hospital in Chennai, doctors said.

Ravindran was brought to the hospital with a swelling in his lower jaw. The doctors told that he was suffering from a rare case of 'compound composite odontoma'.

The Surgery was performed on July 11 and the patient, Ravindran stayed in the hospital for three days.

"Ravindran was bought here with a swelling in his lower right jaw. When we took his case into consideration and examined his CT scan and radiograph reports it was revealed that there was a large lesion with multiple hard structures," Dr Senthilnathan told ANI.

"We considered it as a tumour and conducted the biopsy and a then a surgery was planned under general anaesthesia. We planned either to reconstruct the jaw completely or treat the tumour with a conservative method and save the jaw. We then went for the conservative method, we would have reconstructed the jaw in case it would have been fractured during the surgery," he added.

According to the doctor, in the initial check-up, the surgeons revealed a large lesion with multiple hard structures at a single site within the lower jaw. During the surgery, the operating surgeon noticed a well-defined bag like mass which was removed in its entirety.

The specimen was then radiographed which revealed multiple tiny radiopaque structures. On further evaluation by the oral pathologists, and to their utmost surprise the bag revealed 526 teeth-like structures. In the pathologists' own words "it was reminiscent of pearls in an oyster". It took 2 hours of meticulous searching to remove all the minute teeth from the opened bag like a specimen.

The parents first noticed the swelling in the lower right jaw, when Ravindra was three years old. But the swelling was left undiagnosed for the next four years because the boy refused to cooperate for any investigation procedure as he was too young.

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Later Ravindra was brought to the hospital at the age of seven when the swelling was increased in size.

This is the first-ever case to be documented worldwide, where so many minute teeth were found in a single individual. This rare lesion is termed as "compound composite odontoma".

The surgeons' discretion in removing the lesion in total without exploring it on the operating table (akin to opening a bag of worms) avoided a major mishap and saved the patient from being under general anaesthesia for a longer duration and the attendant complications.

The patient was treated at the right time with the appropriate treatment planning; hence they were relieved of the biggest turmoil of a patient's life, the doctors said.

Ravindra has now recovered completely according to the doctors.