WATCH: Man's nostril gets blocked by own tooth

A rarest of the rare disease caused a Chinese man’s nostril to be blocked for three months, making it difficult for him to breathe. 

Known in medical terms as an intranasal retained tooth, the case is only reported only 23 times in the medical journals during a span of around 50 years from 1959 to 2008.

This case was reported in China where a 30-year-old Zhang Binsheng was shocked to discover during his medical treatment that his nostril was blocked by his own tooth.

According to Chinese television station Heilongjiang TV, Binsheng told his doctors that he was unable to breathe properly specially at nights and also had a constant smell of decay in his nose. The doctors advised him to undergo a X-ray, which revealed presence of a high density object at the back of his nasal activity.

The doctors who were also shocked to learn, told the patient that they expected it to be the Binsheng’s own tooth.

It was later revealed that the tooth had found a safe place in the nostril and managed to grow.

“Even his nose had not rejected it as a foreign object and continued to grow there until it managed to block the nostril, making it difficult to breathe,” said the doctor at the Fourth Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, in Harbin, who performed a 30-minute surgery to remove it.

Having a tooth growing in your nose is considered to be rare, with less than 0.1% of the population likely to be affected.