He had been having trouble breathing through his right nostril for years.
When a 38-year-old man went to an ear, nose, and throat clinic at Mount Sinai in New York, an examination revealed a deviated septum and some kind of bony obstruction. Using a rhinoscope, a camera attached to a tube, doctors saw something protruding from the floor of his nose: a hard, painless white mass.
A CT scan solved the mystery. It wasn’t a tumor or a bone out of place. It was a tooth growing where it should never be.
They removed it with intranasal surgery, and there were reportedly no complications. After three months of follow-up, the obstruction had disappeared. Ectopic teeth are rare, affecting between 0,1% and 1% of the population, and one ending up in the nasal cavity is even rarer. If you’ve also had trouble breathing through one side for a long time, it’s worth not assuming it’s normal.