17-year-old boy in a seven-hour operation.
Ashik Gavai was brought in with a swelling in his right jaw, Dr
Sunanda Dhiware, head of Mumbai's JJ Hospital's dental department,
told the BBC.
The teenager had been suffering for 18 months and travelled to the
city from his village after local doctors failed to identify the cause
of the problem.
Doctors have described his condition as "very rare" and "a world record".
"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," 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," she added.
The surgery, conducted on Monday, involved two surgeons and two
assistants. Ashik now has 28 teeth.
Describing Ashik's case as "very rare", Dr Dhiware said she had "not
seen anything like this before in my 30-year career", but said she was
"thrilled to get such an exciting case".
"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."
Ashik's father Suresh Gavai was quoted by the Mumbai Mirror as saying
that his son complained of severe pain a month ago.
"I was worried that it may turn out to be cancer so I brought him to
Mumbai," he said.
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