A teenager in India has undergone a gruelling seven hour operation to remove 232 dental growths from his mouth. Ashik Gavai, 17, was filmed having the astonishing number of ‘teeth’ extracted at the JJ Hospital in Mumbai after his lower jaw started to swell up. It was revealed that Ashik was suffering with a condition called complex odontoma, which means that tooth-like growths composed of enamel, dentin, and pulp tissue, sprout out of the gums continuously – it tends to affect teenagers rather than adults.
Head of dentistry at the hospital, Sunansa Shivare-Palwankar, told AFP that this could be a world record, as the current record for teeth removed at one time is just 37. She said ‘We operated on Monday and it took us almost seven hours. We thought it [would] be simple surgery but once we opened [him up] there were multiple pearl-like teeth inside the jaw bone.’ After extracting the smaller ‘teeth’, the team discovered there was a larger ‘marble-like’ structured under the tissue which took much longer to remove. Eventually it was drilled into smaller sections and extracted piece by piece.
Mr Gavai appeared to be exhausted after the surgery but managed a small smile for the photographers. No doubt he will be pleased that the team managed to preserve his jaw bone and that he will not be left with any noticeable deformities.