SALT LAKE CITY — Human beings generally grow 32 teeth in their mouth by adulthood, but a 7-year-old boy from India recently had a growth removed from his mouth that contained 526 teeth.
CBS News reports that dentists from the Saveetha Dental College and Hospital in Chennai, India discovered swelling in the boy’s jaw was caused by a “compound composite odontoma,” which a 2014 study notes is a nonaggressive benign tumor or lesion made of enamel and other toothy materials.
A press release from the hospital notes that the boy was first taken to another hospital when he was 3 years old but refused to cooperate with any investigations into his jaw pain. Four years later, after investigating the child’s lower jaw, surgeons discovered a bag-like tumor that weighed about 200 grams, or about half a pound.
After removing the tumor, oral pathologists found 526 tooth-like structures — each of which resembled a tooth complete with enamel and root structures. The press release notes that the teeth varied from 1-15 millimeters in size.
USA Today notes the lesion, which one pathologist compared to “pearls in an oyster,” was likely caused by genetics or radiation from nearby cellphone towers. The procedure lasted a total of one and a half hours, according to a video from the New Indian Express.
BBC News reported in 2014 that a similar case in Mumbai saw 232 teeth removed from 17-year-old Ashik Gavai’s mouth. One major difference, though — instead of removing the lesion from the boy’s mouth, doctors opted to remove each tooth individually from Gavai’s mouth.