232 teeth removed from boy's mouth in India

AMRAVATI REGION, India, July 24 (UPI) -- When an Indian boy went in for dental surgery after complaining of pain and swelling in his jaw, surgeons were shocked to find that his mouth was packed with more than 230 teeth.

After six hours of surgery, doctors at J.J. Hospital were able to extract 232 teeth from the mouth of 17-year-old Ashiq Gavai.

"Ashik's malaise was diagnosed as a complex composite odontoma where a single gum forms lots of teeth. It's a sort of benign tumor," Dr. Sunanda Dhiware, the head of J.J.'s dental department, told the BBC. "At first, we couldn't cut it out so we had to use the basic chisel and hammer to take it out."

There were so many teeth in Gavai's mouth that the hospital plans on contacting the Guinness Books of World Records.

"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," Dhiware said.

According to doctors, the young man now has a full set of 28 teeth.

If the surgery had not been performed, it's possible that the tumor-like growth would have broken Gavai's jaw.