By Bob Yirka — MedicalXPress, 7 December 2021
A 38-year-old male patient complaining of difficulty breathing through one of his nostrils for several years was found to have an ectopic tooth growing in his nose. In their paper published in The New England Journal of Medicine, physicians Sagar Khanna and Michael Turner describe how the tooth was identified and what they did to fix the problem.
Ectopic body parts are defined as body parts growing in places where they normally do not grow. The most common type of ectopic growth involves teeth, and in most cases of ectopic tooth development, a canine is involved, typically growing in the wrong direction in the upper jaw.
In this new case, the doctors first found a deviated septum along with calcified septal spurs. After taking a closer look during rhinoscopy, in which a camera is introduced into a nostril, the doctors found a white object protruding from the wall of the right nostril. X-rays showed it to be an ectopic tooth that had grown upward from the jaw rather than down into the mouth. The doctors suggested surgery and the patient agreed. The tooth was extracted with no complications, and on follow-up the wound had healed properly with no evidence of infection or new tooth growth. The patient also reported being able to breathe freely once again.
The doctors note that ectopic teeth are extremely rare, occurring in just 0.1% of all people, and it is even rarer for an ectopic tooth to grow all the way up into the nasal cavity. They emphasise the importance for people with ectopic body parts to see their doctor, as such growths can push other teeth out of the way or lead to cysts forming on or near the affected body parts.