New Delhi: In a rare incident, the doctors extracted an astounding 526 teeth from the mouth of a seven-year-old boy. The incident was reported from Chennai where the doctors performed this rare surgery at the city's Saveetha Dental College and Hospital. The child suffered from a rare case of "compound composite ondontome". He was brought to the hospital with a swelling in his lower right jaw.

P.Senthilnathan, Professor -Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the hospital told that the parents first noticed the swelling when the boy was three years old. But they didn't bother much as the swelling wasn't much then and the boy did not cooperate with investigative procedures either. Later as swelling increased, and then the parents had to bring the boy to the hospital.

The surgeon further said an X-ray and CT-scan of the boy's lower right jaw showed a lot of rudimentary teeth following which the doctors decided on the surgery. "We opened up the jaw after administering general anaesthesia and saw a bag/sack inside it. The sack, weighing about 200 grams, was carefully removed and was later found to contain 526 teeth -- small, medium and big sized," Senthilnathan was quoted by IANS as saying.

Though some were very tiny particles, the doctors said, they had the properties of teeth. It took five long hours for the doctors to remove all the minute teeth from the sack. It was reminiscent of pearls in an oyster, the doctors said. "The boy was normal three days after the surgery," said Pratibha Ramani, Professor and Head of the Department, Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology.

According to the doctors, this is the first ever case documented in the world in which in an individual has been found to have so many minute teeth.