Surgeons from the American state of Maryland had to carry out one of the most difficult operations in their practice. The parents of the four-month-old boy sounded the alarm and went to the doctors after they noticed that their baby's head was growing too fast. Doctors carried out a scan and found that a tooth had grown in the patient's brain.
As surgeons and oncologists explained to the frightened parents, this was due to the formation of a rare congenital tumor - craniopharyngioma, writes the New England Journal of Medicine. This neoplasm is overwhelmingly benign, but it can grow to the size of a golf ball and causes a decrease in the sense of smell, impairment of hearing and vision, and increases intracranial pressure.
Researchers have always suspected that these tumors, which appear in a child during pregnancy, are formed from the same cells as teeth, since they found large accumulations of calcium in them, but they did not have to find a real formed tooth before this case.
The surgeons successfully removed the tumor, and the boy, according to them, is doing well. However, the tooth that grew in his pituitary gland nevertheless disrupted the work of the brain, in particular, the correct production of hormones - the patient will have to take them for the rest of his life.
This case can rightfully take pride of place in the list of the strangest operations performed by oncologists. In the meantime, a young man from Iran who had to treat a hairy eye is in the lead in the ranking. A strange swelling in his eye appeared almost immediately after birth, but by the age of 19 it had significantly increased in size (up to 0.6 cm) and prevented the eyelids from closing, in addition, coarse hair began to grow out of it.
Doctors removed the tumor and found that it was a limbal dermoid - an extremely rare, usually benign, formation. According to doctors, if the young man continued to delay with the treatment, his tumor could not only overgrow with hair, but also begin to sweat: over time, the corresponding glands often appear on the neoplasms.