Two surgeons and two assistants on Monday, July 21, 2014 successfully extracted 273 teeth from 17 year-old, Ashik Gavai’s mouth. The operation lasted for 7 hours.

According to the doctor in charge, Dr Dhiware, Ashik’s condition which was described as “rare” and a “world record” was a complex composite odontoma where a single gum forms lots of teeth. It’s a sort of benign tumour.

His jaw had been swollen for 1 year and 6 months. His father who thought it was cancer brought him to the dental section of Mumbai’s JJ Hospital. After his operation, Ashik was left with 28 teeth.

Speaking further on the case, Dr Dhiware said, “At first, we couldn’t cut it out so we had to use the basic chisel and 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.

According to medical literature available on the condition, it is known to affect the upper jaw and a maximum of 37 teeth have been extracted from the tumour in the past. But in Ashik’s case, the tumour was found deep in the lower jaw and it had hundreds of teeth.”