In a rare surgery, Patna doctors remove 82 teeth from teenager's jaw

A teenager from Bihar, suffering from a rare tumor, had to undergo a 3-hour operation to remove extra 82 teeth from his mouth.

Nitish Kumar, 17, had been suffering from Complex Odontoma, a rare tumor of the jaw for the past five years. The severity of the condition meant that he had to undergo an operation to fix his jaw, which had a total of 82 teeth in two large lumps. While generally there are only 32 teeth in a human's mouth, the tumour caused an unwanted growth of extra teeth in his mouth.

His condition deteriorated over the past few years because of the lack of treatment. Fortunately, he consulted doctors at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences in Bihar and was able to get a date of his operation.

"He came with complaint of swelling & pain in the jaw. After examination, we diagnosed that he had Complex Odontoma, a rare jaw tumor," Dr Priyankar Singh, IGIMS Patna told ANI.

The tumor developed due to a fault in teeth developing substance. "During operation, we found that parts of teeth were accumulated in the back of the jaw that could develop 82 teeth. The patient is healthy now & will be discharged soon," he said.

The operation was successful and the boy is now healthy, although he is also being monitored so that no other problem comes up. Surgery was done for the tumor spread in both the jaws, in which a set of 82 teeth was removed.

However, this is not the first time a case like this has been reported in India. In 2019, a team of doctors from Chennai performed surgery to remove 526 teeth from the mouth of a 7-year-old boy named Ravindran.