***WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT BELOW***
If you're ever missing a tooth, make sure to check inside your bollocks; that's the moral of a bizarre medical case in Russia.
Doctors in Morozov Children's Hospital in Moscow feared that a poor 13-year-old chap may have had a tumour after they felt a lump in his testicle, and so decided to operate immediately.
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However, they were astonished to find the cause of the lump was a molar tooth, which was actually missing from his mouth and had evidently decided to grow in his ball instead.
Doctors said the cause of the rare condition was a teratoid tumour originating before birth due to a stem cell failure.
The 'rarest of surgeries' was successfully carried out by surgeon Dmitry Tarusin, a senior children's urologist and andrologist, and it is believed the teen can expect to have good reproductive health in later life.
A statement from the hospital described it as a 'truly unique case'.
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It read: "The tooth was the second molar, or the seventh in the upper jaw. It is usually replaced by the permanent tooth at the age of 10 to 12.
"(A scan) revealed something inside the testicle that looked like renal gravel (gravel in kidneys).
"Doctors decided to operate on the patient as soon as possible.
"The surgery proved that the real seventh tooth - a molar - was growing inside the testicle, the one that was missing in the jaw.
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"Dental science knows examples when teeth grew inside the lung, but a tooth growing inside a testicle is a truly unique case."
Thankfully then, it looks like the poor guy is gonna be OK, but maybe out of respect for him we should all think twice before describing something like renewing our parking permit as a 'huge ball ache'.
This young chap in Russia can consider himself fortunate though by comparison with the 159 men who have wrongly had a testicle removed by the NHS.
As a result of the numerous botched ops, the health service is now having to fork out £3.2m ($4.17m) in compensation, according to litigation authority NHS Resolution.
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In the majority of cases, the errors were the result of delays in correctly diagnosing an illness, leaving doctors with no choice but to cut off testicles which could have been saved.
However, there were a few men who had the wrong testicle removed due to a surgical error, and after realising their blunder, doctors then had to remove the correct one.
Featured Image Credit: East2West NewsTopics: Science, World News, Weird, Health, Russia