A 17-year-old girl who was unable to eat and could barely walk was found to have a hairball weighing 2.2lbs in her stomach.
The teenager, known only as Komal, arrived at Shree Hospital in Pune, western India, last Saturday complaining of a severe stomach ache. She 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.
Upon diagnosing the 17-year-old, known only as Komal, with Rapunzel syndrome — a rare condition in which a person eats their own hair — doctors had to immediately perform surgery on her, the Daily Mail reports:
“It took us an hour and a half to retrieve the hairball. She is doing well now,” the surgeon who performed the operation, Dr. Shreehari Dhole-Patil, told medical journal BMJ, which published a case study.
Shortly after the surgery, Dhole-Patil questioned the girl and learned Komal had trichotillomania — a psychological disorder in which one pulls out one’s hair, Mayo Clinic reports. She also had trichophagia, a condition in which one eats the pulled out hair.Komal told the doctor she had been eating her own hair since she was 12 years old. Her parents say they will now take her to a psychologist to properly treat her condition.
“For the last three years, we had thought she had some gynecological problem as told to us by doctors. We even spent $7,200 on various tests and medicines but no doctor could see the hairball in stomach,” said Komal’s father. “While we are shocked to learn that our daughter had this condition, we are relieved to know she is fine now.”
