Doctors remove 232 teeth from boy's mouth

It’s the tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth!

Doctors in a hospital in India have removed as many as 232 teeth from the mouth of a 17-year-old boy.

The extraction, according to the BBC, took seven hours, and the boy’s condition has been described by doctors as unique and “a world record”.

The operation was done at Sir J.J. Hospital in Mumbai after Ashik Gavai was brought in with a swelling in his right jaw, a doctor at the health facility – Dr Sunanda Dhiware – told the BBC.

Following the medical procedure, the teenage boy now has 28 teeth.

Now a subject of interest around the world, Ashik had been reportedly suffering for more than a year and had made a trip to the city from his village after local doctors failed to the identify the cause of the problem.

Dr Sunanda Dhiware told the British broadcaster that the boy’s malaise was diagnosed as a “complex composite odontoma where a single gum forms lots of teeth”.

“It’s a sort of benign tumour,” he said.

A malaise is defined as a general feeling of discomfort, illness, or uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify.

Ashik Gavai is said to have suffered from unusual discomfort in his mouth for 18 months. (Getty Images)

After the removal of 232 teeth from his mouth, Ashik is now left with 28 teeth. (Getty Images)

The doctors first failed to cut the tumour out, and so they had to use the “basic chisel hammer to take it out”.

"Once we opened it, little pearl-like teeth started coming out, one-by-one. Initially, we were collecting them, they were really like small white pearls. But then we started to get tired. We counted 232 teeth,” said Dr Sunanda Dhiware.

The surgery was conducted on Monday and involved two surgeons and two assistants.

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