A 17-year-old boy in India had far more teeth than what is considered the norm. Doctors recently extracted 232 teeth from his mouth in a procedure that reportedly lasted 7 hours.


Most children have about 20 teeth and as they grow into adults the tooth count should reach the 32 mark. A 17-year-old boy in India had far more teeth than what is considered the norm.

Doctors recently extracted 232 teeth from his mouth in a procedure that reportedly lasted 7 hours. Prior to having his teeth removed, Ashik Gavai suffered for 18 long months.

When the pain in his mouth became unbearable, he traveled to Mumbai from his village. Local doctors had been unable to find out what was wrong with the teen.

Dr Sunanda Dhivare, who is the head of Mumbai’s Sir JJ Group of Hospital dental department first met Gavai when he came in for swelling on the right side of his jaw. She soon discovered he had over 200 teeth buried inside his mouth.

She remarked “Ashik's malaise was diagnosed as a complex composite odontoma where a single gum forms lots of teeth. It's a sort of benign tumour.” She went on to classify his case as extremely rare.

The medical team used a chisel and hammer to open a growth affecting a single molar, which is where the minuscule teeth were located. Immediately they saw what was described as ‘pearl-like teeth’ with “some as tiny as a grain of mustard and some almost the size of a marble.” Eventually they pulled them all out individually.

Gavai is expected to recover.