This giant salivary stone was the spitting image of an impacted tooth on examination and X-ray, duping both dentists and doctors.

The 37-year-old patient had been experiencing acute, intermittent pain in the right side of his lower jaw and diffuse swelling when he was referred by a private dentist to an oral surgeon.

A dental X-ray showed the supposedly supernumerary ‘tooth’ jutting between two premolars and extending below the roots of another.

But an ultrasound showed a very different picture, revealing a 20mm object in the right submandibular duct and a swollen right submandibular gland, also known as Wharton’s duct.