526 'teeth' extracted from 7-year-old boy's mouth, like 'pearls in an oyster'

Doctors in India have removed 526 "teeth" from a 7-year-old boy.

The 7-year-old, named Ravindranath, was taken to Saveetha Dental College in Chennai, India, after he complained of swelling on the right side of his lower jaw.

His parents said he had experienced the swelling since he was 3, India's National Herald reported, but the condition had worsened and required immediate medical attention.

An X-ray of the boy's jaw revealed a sack of tissue weighing 200 grams, doctors said. It contained 526 teeth-like structures.

The sack was a "compound composite odontoma," a benign tumor made up of normal dental tissue such as enamel, according to CBS News. Such tumors are most commonly found in teenagers.

Dr. Vineet Dhar, the chair of orthodontics and pediatric dentistry at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, said that these sacks are common, but they usually contain "a cluster of four or five, or less" teeth.

"A majority of them were calcified, enamel-like structures, but they would not be called teeth," he said of the case.

Some were a 10th of a millimeter, while others were up to 15 millimeters, the Times of India reported.

The surgery took five hours.

"It was reminiscent of pearls in an oyster," said the doctors, according to the Herald.

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The cause of the growth remains unclear, though doctors at the college have narrowed down the possibilities to genetics or even radiation from cellphone towers.

Dhar added that the boy was probably not getting regular dental-checkups.

A similar case took place in 2014, when dentists extracted 232 teeth from a teen in Mumbai.

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