An adult normally has about 32 teeth but surgeons in India have pulled out over 200 teeth from a teenager in an operation that could break world record.

Seventeen-year-old Ashik Gavai, from Buldhana in India, had difficulty biting and chewing because of a severe swelling on the right side of his lower jaw. Dental surgeons at the JJ Hospital in Mumbai said that the boy had been bearing the jaw pain and swelling for over 18 months.

After conducting a series of tests, doctors discovered that the boy had an unusual growth in one of his molar teeth.  Gavai was aware of this unusual growth for a while now but was not able to seek immediate treatment because his family was too poor to afford costly dental procedures.  His treatment was in fact paid for by the government through a health care program for the poor.

Sunanda Dhivare-Palwankar, head of JJ Hospital's dental department, said that it wasn't initially clear what causes the abnormal growth so they decided to book Gavai for a surgery. During the operation, they discovered hundreds of small teeth that were growing inside one of the boy's molars that have grown to be as big as a large marble.

Dhivare-Palwankar said that they have pulled out a total of 232 pearl-like structures from one molar and these were all developing independently as teeth. The surgeons also discovered rock-like growth inside the molar, which they decided to remove using an old technique because it was too hard to remove with a drill.

"We had to resort to the age-old, now outdated, 'chisel-mallet' procedure to break down that hard formation as it was putting immense pressures on the jaw bone and surrounding healthy teeth," Dhivare-Palwankar said.

Vandana Thorawade, who was among the team that operated on Gavai, said that the teenager suffered from complex odontoma, a rare condition characterized by tumor growing under the gum and creating tiny tooth-like growths called denticles. Dhivare-Palwankar said that Gavai's condition likely formed after he lost his milk teeth.

The surgery, which took place on Monday, took seven hours to complete. Dhivare-Palwankar said that Gavai's case could be a world record because the maximum number of teeth that they are aware to have been extracted in such a procedure was 37 while Gavai had 232 pulled out from his mouth.

"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 tumor in the past," Dhivare-Palwankar said. "But in Ashik's case, the tumor was found deep in the lower jaw and it had hundreds of teeth."