WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT
A 16-year-old boy from India has had a tooth removed from his left eye socket in the first ever recorded case of a tooth growing out of an eye.
The teenager had noticed a painless swelling of his eyelid for about a month before the finding, but was only taken to hospital when two hard white points began poking through his skin.
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Treating doctors had an inkling the growth was a tooth due to its texture, colour and “fairly smooth surface” before a scan revealed a fully formed canine tooth had grown in the space between the teen’s eyelid and eyebrow.
Dr Meghana Tanwar, a medical consultant at the Aravind Eye Hospital in India who co-authored a report on the case told Live Science: “The structure of a lone tooth in the superior orbit [upper eye socket] was quite obvious.”
Doctors successfully performed to remove the tooth. Credit: aaojournal
Surgery was successfully performed to remove the tooth and doctors confirmed there was no evidence of anything else untoward or a reason for the growth.
The tooth found in the teenager’s eyelid is known as ectopic due to its growth in the wrong place on the body.
Ectopic teeth are most commonly found in the maxillary sinus, the hollow canal behind the nasal cavity, but can sometimes erupt elsewhere instead of following the usual path to the mouth.
Dr Tanwar says this is the first time an ectopic tooth has been found in this location on the body.
The tooth that was extracted from the boy’s eyelid. Credit: aaojournal
“To the best of our knowledge this is the first and only ectopic tooth reported in the superior orbit,” she said.
“This was a first not just for us but the world over.
“We were very surprised by it.”
