Tumor Had Teeth: Baby Survives Brain Surgery in Rare Case (PHOTOS)
A tumor had teeth when doctors managed to remove it from the brain of a baby boy recently. Although the infant will need to take hormones for the rest of his life to survive, physicians are satisfied with the results and are using the rare case to learn more about these types of tumors.
The tumor with teeth had formed in the middle of the brain of a 4-month-old from Maryland, according to reports. Doctors felt that the child's head was abnormally large for his age, and a brain scan revealed a large mass called a craniopharyngioma— fortunately these kinds of tumors do not spread to other parts of the body.
TO SEE PHOTOS OF THE TUMOR THAT HAD TEETH, CLICK HERE (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT).
"It's not every day you see teeth in any type of tumor in the brain. In a craniopharyngioma, it's unheard of," Dr. Narlin Beaty of University of Maryland Medical Center told LiveScience. He along Dr. Edward Ahn of Johns Hopkins Children's Center performed the delicate surgery to save the child's life.
"We pulled out a full tooth … I think that's something slightly different," Beaty admitted.
What made the case so rare wasn't just the tooth— most tumors like this one are seen in children ages five to 14. Teeth have been pulled out of people's brains in the past, but from different tumors called teratomas, which differ from craniopharyngiomas because they have more types of tissue.
Researchers suspected that craniopharyngiomas developed from the same cells that make up teeth. Previously, calcium deposits were found in these kinds of tumors, and now that full teeth have been found, it provides more evidence for that theory. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Feb. 27.
The 4-month-old baby boy is now doing well, physicians said. The tumor affected his pituitary gland, which means his body will never produce certain hormones. Fortunately, those hormones can be provided with special treatments.
"He's doing extremely well, all things considered," Beaty explained. "This was a big tumor right in the center of his brain. Before the modern surgical era this child would not have survived."
