Surgeons in India have removed 232 teeth from the mouth
of a Mumbai teenager in what they believe may be a world-record operation,
reports ‘The Guardian’.
Ashik Gavai, 17, required medical help for a swelling on
the right side of his lower jaw and the case was referred to the city's JJ
hospital, where they found he was suffering from a condition known as complex
odontoma, said head of dentistry Sunanda Dhivare-Palwankar.
"We operated on Monday and it took us almost seven
hours. We thought it may be a simple surgery but once we opened it there were
multiple pearl-like teeth inside the jaw bone," she said.
The teenager had been suffering for 18 months and
travelled to the city from his village after local doctors failed to identify
the cause of the problem, BBC reports.
Dhivare-Palwankar said the literature they had come
across on the condition showed a maximum of 37 teeth being removed in such a
procedure, whereas she and her team had counted more than 232 taken from
Gavai's mouth. "It could be a world record," she said.
