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Journalism of Courage
In an unusual medical case, doctors at a Chennai hospital removed over 500 teeth from a boy’s mouth. The parents of the seven-year-old had brought him to a dental hospital after they noticed swelling on the right side of his face, but it turned out to be a rare case of “compound composite ondontome”.
As many as 526 teeth of varying sizes were extracted from the right lower jaw of the child in a surgery that lasted five hours. Five surgeons and seven pathologists were initially engaged in an operation to remove a 4×3 cm tumour from the lower right side of his jaw. After it was removed the surgeons spotted the teeth present there, news agency ANI reported.
“The issue was noticed when the child was three years old. It was ignored then as he did not cooperate.. four years later, it took a lot of efforts to convince him for the surgery as the swelling increased,” Dr Pratibha Ramani, the Head of Department of oral and maxillofacial pathology at the Saveetha Dental College and Hospital told PTI.
The doctors say it is the world’s first case in which such a large number of teeth have been found and removed from a single site. Over 200 such minute ‘teeth’ were from a teenager’s mouth in Mumbai in 2014.
According to the hospital, the surgery, which would have cost around Rs 75,000 to Rs one lakh, was done free of cost under a Tamil Nadu government scheme. The boy was discharged three days after the operation.
