14 DAY TRIAL // A recent paper in the American Journal of Case Reports tells the tale of a terribly confused tooth that, for some reason, grew inside the nose of a man in Saudi Arabia rather than inside the 22-year-old's mouth.
A photo of the tooth is available next to this article. Fair warning: the image shows the chomper while still inside the man's nose and is therefore quite shocking, so proceed with caution when clicking your way to a closer look.
As detailed in the American Journal of Case Reports, the 22-year-old man was utterly clueless about the fact that a fully-grown tooth had set up camp inside his nose when he presented to a local hospital and asked for medical assistance.
Live Science tells us that the man only decided to go see a doctor because he kept experiencing nosebleeds. These nosebleeds occurred once or twice a month and had been troubling the patient for 3 years when he finally sought help.
The same source tells us that, while exploring the inside of this man's nose, doctors came across a peculiar bony mass measuring about 1 centimeter (roughly 0.5 inches) in length and whose color was similar to that of ivory.
Upon closer inspection, it became clear that this bizarre mass was actually a tooth that was feeling quite at home inside the man's left nostril. Doctors immediately figured out that this tooth was to blame for the man's regular nosebleeds.
“A 22-year-old male presented with recurrent, mild, unilateral left-sided epistaxis once to twice per month for 3 years. This usually occurred after minor nasal trauma or rubbing his nose,” the specialists in charge of seeing this case through write in their case report.
“Nasal endoscopy showed a white cylindrical bony mass 1 cm long arising from the floor of the nose, with no attachment to the nasal septum or the lateral wall of the nose. Examination of the right nasal cavity was unremarkable,” they add.
In order to remove the tooth from inside the man's nose, doctors had to put the 22-year-old patient under general anesthesia. The intervention proved successful and the man has since made a full recovery, information shared with the public says.
Talking to the press, Dr. John Hellstein with the University of Iowa in the US has explained that, contrary to what some might assume, cases of people who sport one extra tooth are by no means few and far between. Still, such extra teeth very rarely work their way into a patient's nasal cavity.