4.5kg Hairball Removed from the 18-year-old's Stomach via
CNN cited the New England Journal of Medicine as source reported that an 18-year-old woman in Illinois who once had a habit of eating her hair - a condition called trichophagia [wiki]--had a 4.5 kg trichobezoar (hairball) removed from the stomach.
She complained of a five-month history of pain and swelling in her abdomen, vomiting after eating and a 40-pound weight loss.
After a scan of the woman's abdomen showed a large mass, doctors lowered a scope through her esophagus.
It revealed "a large bezoar occluding nearly the entire stomach," wrote Drs. Ronald M. Levy and Srinadh Komanduri, gastroenterologists at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois.
The woman underwent surgery to remove the mass of black, curly hair, which weighed 10 pounds and measured 15 inches by 7 inches by 7 inches, the doctors said.
Five days later, she was eating normally and was sent home.
A year later, the pain and vomiting were gone, the patient had regained 20 pounds "and reports that she has stopped eating her hair."
The following picture found from the special collections of human hairball or trichobezoars in the National Museum of Health and Medicine possibly showed the teenager had undergone a similar hairball removal surgery.
