Monday, March 3, 2014

"Johns Hopkins doctors remove baby's brain tumor that contained teeth"

"Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital have removed a rare tumor that contained several fully grown teeth from a baby boy's brain."
The tumor was found in the then-4-month-old from West Virginia in 2012 after a pediatrician noticed that his head was unusually large for his age.

Doctors wrote about the findings in an article that appeared this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The discovery could someday help researchers trying to cure diseases or grow new organs, medical experts said.

"It gives us more insight into the origins of the tumor," said Dr. Edward Ahn, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins who was the lead surgeon in the case.

"We had to think twice," Ahn said. "We first thought they were flakes of calcium. When we looked at it closer, we were like, 'Those really look like teeth.' "
Chicago Tribune

10 comments:

The Dude said...

Tumors can contain all kinds of ectopic tissue. Why this is news is beyond me.

Revenant said...

Well, fully grown teeth in the baby's *mouth* would be a bit unusual at an age of four months.

The Dude said...

Not that unusual.

Amartel said...

Something to chew on.

Amartel said...

You can really get your teeth into this story.

The Dude said...

I'll tell you what would be unusual - that would be cutting open a liberal's skull and finding any brain matter at all.

AllenS said...

I'll bite, why is this not unusual?

The Dude said...

When one looks into tumors one finds all kinds of cells and tissue growing there. Teeth - not unknown. Hair - oh yeah.

Brains in a liberal? Hasn't happened yet.

Christy said...

When I was a kid I heard that teeth- and hair-containing cysts were our undeveloped twin.

The Dude said...

Well there you go. I was told they were like a safe deposit box that you could use when your original teeth and hair fell out.

I made that up.