A 17-year-old girl from the western part of India who was unable to eat and could barely walk was found to have a hairball weighing 2.2lbs in her stomach. She was presented with acute abdominal pain and had completely lost her appetite and was too ill to walk. Doctors discovered she had a history of trichotillomania - a condition where people pull out their own hair and trichophagia - where they eat the hair that has been pulled out. She had been chewing on her hair for five years - and had swallowed so much she had started to vomit every time she ate.
This psychological condition is known as Rapunzel Syndrome. The syndrome is rare, with less than 120 cases reported in the medical literature, and almost always affects young women. The CT scans revealed a 2lb mass of hair in her stomach which had caused a large lesion and immediately subjected to surgery to remove the 17cm wide giant…
