A seven-year-old boy who suffered swelling and discomfort in his jaw for four years has had 526 teeth removed from his mouth.

The teeth, which were embedded in a tumour within the child’s jawbone, were extracted during a surgical procedure in Chennai which lasted five hours.

The phenomenon is known as a compound composite odontoma and in a similar case from 2014, a Mumbai teen had 232 teeth removed from his mouth.

Dr Prathibha Ramani, from Saveetha Dental College, where the surgery was carried out, told the Times of India: “They looked like pearls in an oyster. Even the smallest piece had a crown, root and an enamel coating like a tooth.”

Dental surgeon Dr Senthil Nathan said: “The tumour is very nicely demarcated from rest of the bone and it’s a four-to-five centimetre into three centimetre size in the right side of the lower jaw that is completely removed and taken out.

“Then the tumour mass was given to the histopathology department, then finally we come to know that there was 526 teeth which were present in the entire sac.”