A 7-year-old boy complaining of jaw pain was found to have 526 teeth inside his mouth, according to the hospital in India where he was treated.
The boy was admitted last month in the southern city of Chennai because of swelling and pain near his molars in his lower right jaw.
When doctors scanned and x-rayed his mouth, they found a sac embedded in his lower jaw filled with “abnormal teeth,” Dr. Prathiba Ramani, the head of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology at Saveetha Dental College and Hospital, told CNN.
While the surgery to remove the teeth took place last month, doctors needed time to individually examine each tooth before they could confirm their findings.
526 teeth removed from Chennai boy’s mouth
The swollen right cheek of seven-year-old Ravindranath looked like symptoms of a decayed tooth to his parents.
Read: https://t.co/zmf2PEY0ZU pic.twitter.com/EnHPbjZvHz
— Times of India (@timesofindia) July 31, 2019
After discovering the sac, two surgeons removed it from the boy’s mouth. Then Ramani’s team took four to five hours to empty the sac to confirm its contents and discovered the hundreds of teeth.
“There were a total of 526 teeth ranging from 0.1 millimeters (.004 inches) to 15 millimeters (0.6 inches). Even the smallest piece had a crown, root and enamel coat indicating it was a tooth,” she said.
The boy was released three days after the surgery and is expected to make a full recovery, Ramani said.
The boy’s parents first noticed swelling in his jaw when he was 3 years old. https://t.co/uMeRvFh8U1
— ABC13 Houston (@abc13houston) August 1, 2019
Ramani said the boy was suffering from a very rare condition called compound composite odontoma. She said what caused the condition is unclear, but it could be genetic or it could be due to environmental factors like radiation.
The boy actually may have had the extra teeth for some time. His parents told doctors that they had noticed swelling in his jaw when he was as young as 3, but they couldn’t do much about it because he would not stay still or allow doctors to examine him.
Dr. P. Senthilnathan, head of the hospital’s Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Department and one of two surgeons who operated on the boy, detailed the procedure to CNN.
“Under general anesthesia, we drilled into the jaw from the top,” he said. “We did not break the bone from the sides, meaning reconstruction surgery was not required. The sac was removed. You can think of it as a kind of balloon with small pieces inside.”
Dr. Senthilnathan said the discovery showed it was important to seek treatment for dental issues as early as possible.
Awareness about dental and oral health was improving, he said, though access in rural areas remained problematic.
Chennai doctors extract 526 teeth from 7-year-old’s mouth.https://t.co/aSIhGBRcQV pic.twitter.com/XAwgaxGjhC
— Shining India News (@shiningindnews) August 1, 2019
“Earlier, things like not as many dentists, lack of education, poverty meant that there was not as much awareness. These problems are still there.
“You can see people in cities have better awareness but people who are in rural areas are not as educated or able to afford good dental health.”
In Ravindrath’s case, all has turned out well; the boy now has a healthy count of 21 teeth, Dr. Senthilnathan said.
100 Bubble Tea Pearls Removed From Girl’s Stomach
A 14-year-old Chinese girl was hospitalized after she was constipated for five days, according to AsiaOne in a June 6 report, citing local media outlets.
The girl from Zhejiang Province said she couldn’t eat, had stomach pains, and other symptoms, the report said. Her parents finally took her to the hospital on May 28.
After an X-ray was performed, doctors spherical shapes in her abdomen. Doctors said that the round shadows were undigested tapioca pearls from bubble tea that she had consumed days prior.
The girl said that she had the bubble tea about five days before her health problems surfaced, AsiaOne reported.
Chinese girl suffers constipation for 5 days. The cause? Bubble tea pearlshttps://t.co/tqbTb1xa6b pic.twitter.com/8JKLkXxSs5
— AsiaOne (@asiaonecom) June 6, 2019
The girl was then given laxatives to relieve her of the symptoms, it was reported.
A doctor involved in the case said that he thinks that the girl was hiding her consumption of bubble tea from her parents, saying that she would have had to drink a lot for it to be this severe.
Bubble tea pearls are generally made of starchy tapioca, which can be difficult for the body to digest.
In 2015, there was a scandal involving bubble tea pearls, where a TV reporter in China’s Shandong Province found undigested pearls present in her stomach during a CT scan. An investigation revealed that the tapioca “pearls” were made from old tires and soles of leather shoes.
Epoch Times reporter Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
