An Extra Tooth is Growing into the Nose

When Daniel is 5 years old, his baby teeth are in his mouth (including 4 top front ones: A, B in Fig.1 (X-ray)), while the permanent front ones are forming inside the gums (#1,2).  However, there is an extra tooth (green dashed line) next to one of the central incisors (#1, pink dashed line).  The extra tooth can be wrong in any sense.  It may be too small, abnormally shaped or bad in orientation, as will be mentioned below.

Five years later, the 4 baby front teeth are gone, while the permanent substitutes (Fig.2: #1,2) have grown downward (pink arrow).  In contrast, the extra tooth has gone north (upward: green arrow) and in fact has started to grow into the nose (red dashed line being a bone plate separating the nose from the mouth). 

One more year (Fig.3,4), the extra tooth has grown more into the nose (Fig.3).  The orientation of the normal top front teeth is that the crown (C) is down, while the root (R) is up.  The orientation of an extra tooth can be anything.  In today's case, the crown is up whereas the root is down.  As it is growing, the extra tooth keeps going upstairs (Fig.2 pink arrow).  One day it may grows completely into the nasal cavity, causing nose bleeding and infection!

Return to Kid

Xin Wei, DDS, PhD, MS 1st edition 10/17/2014, last revision 10/25/2014