A 17-year-old teenager from the United Kingdom who habitually ate her hair ended up having a giant hairball inside her stomach. It tore hoer stomach walls, and so doctors performed surgery to remove the hairball.
A report published on February 9 in the journal BMJ Case Reports says that it was 19 inches (48 centimeters) long and filled the teen's stomach.
The teenager is said to have been suffering from Rapunzel syndrome, a rare psychiatric disorder wherein patients eat their own hair. She has also reportedly suffered from trichotillomania in the past and its related disorder, trichophagia.
Bezoars, masses of foreign material in the GI tract, can cause obstruction. While they can be made of many different materials, ones made of hair (trichobezoar) that extend from the stomach to the small bowel and even beyond are described as “Rapunzel syndrome”. pic.twitter.com/CA0EN4t6bx
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Giant Hair Ball Removed From Teen's Stomach
According to ScienceAlert, the teen initially went to the hospital after fainting twice and bruising herself from the falls. During a comprehensive exam on the girl, they found that something is amiss in her upper abdomen.
The 17-year-old then tells the doctors that she had been experiencing intermittent abdominal pain for the past five months and that it has worsened over the past two weeks before her visit to the hospital.
She also mentioned suffering from trichotillomania and its related disorder trichophagia in the past. Trichotillomania is the psychological disorder of a strong urge to pull one's hair, while trichophagia is the compulsive eating of hair.
After undergoing a CT scan, the doctors found a "grossly distended stomach" filled with a large mass of hairball inside. They also noticed that the hairball has already torn the stomach wall and decided to do the surgery to remove the hairball.
The study authors from Queen's Medical Center in Nottingham in England said that the girl was diagnosed with Rapunzel syndrome. A hairball or a trichobezoar was found in the stomach and extended into the intestine.
She underwent surgery, and the doctors got the massive hairball that is so large it already formed a cast of the girl's whole stomach.
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What is Trichotillomania?
Trichotillomania is the hair-pulling disorder characterized by persistent and excessive pulling of one's hair, resulting in a noticeable loss of hair. It is limited to the hair and can also occur in any area of the body where hair grows. However, the most affected area is the scalp, followed by eyelashes and eyebrows.
The loss of hair could range from undetectable areas of thinning of hair to complete alopecia. Trichotillomania is most commonly observed in early adolescence that p[eaks between ages four and 17.
Often, it is connected to trichophagia that leads to the formation of trichobezoars and causes direct danger to patients' health and sometimes life because of intestinal obstruction. This is what happened to the 17-year-old teenager in the UK, who needed a surgical operation to get the giant hairball out of her stomach.
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