“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, take off that hair!”
A 17-year-old woman from Great Britain is recovering well after the doctors discovered a ball with a leg and a half long hair that literally broke through her stomach.
A new report from BMJ Case Reports describes the horrific circumstances of the teenager with Rapunzel syndrome, who compulsively ate her own hair – enough to gather a ball of hair, called a trichobesoar in the clinical setting, which was 19 inches long. filling her entire stomach, according to doctors at Queen’s Medical Center in Nottingham.
The patient was taken to the hospital after two mysterious episodes of fainting that left her face bruised. Doctors quickly ruled out that a head injury was to blame after he noticed swelling in the woman’s upper abdomen. She also described intermittent abdominal pain in the past five months, which had become more severe in the two weeks leading up to the hospitalization.
A CT scan then revealed a large mass inside the “distinguished thick stomach” and a tear in the lining of the organs – at which point the patient’s mental health struggles became clear.
The teenager had a well-known history of trichotillomania, characterized by the desire to remove his hair, as well as trichophagia, which is the compulsive consumption of hair.
Both conditions are rare, as only 0.5% and 3% of people suffer from trichotillomania; about 10% to 30% of trichotillomania cases are accompanied by trichophagia, LiveScience reported. And a 2019 study conducted in the Pancreas noted that of those who suffer from both disorders, only 1% will develop a ball of hair in the gastrointestinal tract.
The hairy specimen grew so large that, after surgical removal, doctors discovered that the trichobezoar “formed a throw of the entire stomach,” they wrote.
The patient is lucky: hairballs of this magnitude were fatal – as in the case of a 16-year-old girl from Great Britain in 2017, who died of Rapunzel syndrome after the trichobesoar caused a fatal infection.
Following the psychiatric evaluation and postoperative healing, the woman was released in just seven days from the procedure. After a month, doctors reported that he was “progressing well with dietary advice” and met regularly with a therapist.
