(Newser)
– A teenage girl with two rare ailments arrived at the hospital after going out twice and leaving a huge lighter. Live Science reports this case in Great Britain, where a 17-year-old girl appeared at the hospital after fainting, with her face and head bruised by the resulting falls. For a case study documented in BMJ case reports, the teenager also mentioned that she had suffered from stomach pain for five months and that they had worsened in the last two weeks. A computer scan showed that the patient had a “distinct thick stomach,” as well as a rupture in the stomach wall – the result of a 19-inch trichobezoar (that is, a huge ball of hair) that burst. When doctors operated to remove it, they found that the mass of the hair was so large that it “formed a throw in the entire stomach.”
It appears that the girl suffered from joint trichotillomania, a hair pulling disorder that affects between 0.5% and 3% of people and trichophagia, which involves the consumption of hair (between 10% and 30% of those with the previous condition have also the latter). Not that having these conditions meant that the girl was destined for the emergency – only 1% of people with both end up like this teenager, with tangled hair and trapped in the intestinal tract, an even rarer, sometimes fatal condition called Rapunzel syndrome. The girl left the hospital a week after the procedure, and the study authors describe her recovery as “eventless”: a month later, she was said to be “progressing well with dietary advice” and attending meetings with a psychologist. there were no signs of complications. (Read more hair ball stories.)