Vol.101 No.5 contentsPRACTICA OTO-RHINO-LARYNGOLOGICA
Vol. 101 No. 5 May 2008
Three Cases of Inverted Supernumerary
Tooth in the Nasal Cavity
Tetsuo Watanabe, Hitomi Motohata and Masashi Suzuki
(Oita University Faculty of Medicine)
Eruption of a tooth into the nasal cavity is a rare clinical entity. We report 3 cases of ectopic inverted tooth in the nasal cavity.
Case 1: An 8-year-old girl presented with cacosmia in the left nasal cavity. A white mass diagnosed as a foreign body was found in the left nasal cavity and was extracted via the left nostril. The mass was a supernumerary tooth.
Case 2: A 7-year-old girl was brought to our outpatient department because of a foreign body in the left nasal cavity. She complained of nasal obstruction, nasal pain, and epistaxis. Panoramic radiography and computed tomography demonstrated that the mass thought to be a foreign body was actually an inverted supernumerary tooth. We removed it by endoscope via an endonasal approach.
Case 3: A 28-year-old man presented with nasal obstruction. Although the diagnosis was hypertrophic rhinitis, a white mass was found in the left nasal cavity. The mass was extracted during submucous turbinectomy and was determined to be an inverted supernumerary tooth.
Although most previous reports have indicated that inverted teeth in the nasal cavity are easily extracted via the nostril, clinicians should be aware that the differential diagnosis of intranasal teeth includes foreign body, rhinolith, and tumor.
Key words :inverted tooth, nasal cavity, foreign body, supernumerary