A 16 - year - old fille ’s orphic gastrointestinal illness turned out to have an especially hirsute culprit behind it . doctor discovered that a giant hairball amaze in her stomach was the reason of her problem .
The lady friend ’s doctorsdetailedthe real animation story of body horror in a paper published this week in theNew England Journal of Medicine , as part of a steady segment highlighting unusual case that pass on through the halls of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston . The case is a rare example of a known condition calledRapuznel syndrome , one that can have spirit - jeopardise complications if not catch early enough . While the girl did have to endure weeks of worsening symptom before the find was made , the doc were able-bodied to successfully absent her hairball with no issues .
return the lack of other explanations , and the fact that her symptoms often lessen right after she regurgitate , her doctors finally suspect that she had gastric outlet obstruction , a condition triggered by a physical stoppage between the tum and small gut . Often , this blockage is from a bezoar , a aesculapian term for any mass of foreign cloth that gets pin in the body , but which is commonly made of hair or fiber .
The girl’s hairball caused her so much stomach pain that it would wake her up in the middle of the night.© PsychoBeard via Getty
To find out for sure , the physician institutionalise down a metro and tv camera to canvass her upper gastrointestinal tract , and that ’s when their suspicions were substantiate . The fille had a hefty trichobezoar ( hirsute bezoar ) in her breadbasket that had started to tangle its way into the small intestine . While some hairball are so giving that they can only be polish off surgically from the body , the doctors were able to safely excerpt the hair that extended into the small intestine and remove the girl ’s trichobezoar through the tube alone . ( For those with an NEJM subscription , here ’s alinkto the picture , but comely monition : It ’s quite knobbed . )
trichobezoar in humans are usually caused bytrichophagia , a build of disordered eat in which people palpate compelled to withdraw their hair . Trichophagia lean to be accompanied by trichotillomania , or the compulsion to pull out one ’s own hair . But when interview , the girl denied that she pulled her hair . Though there have been rare case of trichobezoars not link to trichotillomania , the doctors note that people often feel disgrace about having the condition and may not admit to it , so it ’s still possible that this was the etymon suit of her hairball . Thankfully , the girl ’s physical recovery went swimmingly , with no lingering stomach pain sensation reported a calendar month later . And while she did decline a referral to a psychologist made by the doctors , she secernate them that she was design to see a hypnotherapist advocate by her ally .
Cases of Rapunzel syndrome are uncommon , but surprisingly enough , this is n’t the first one to make waves in 2024 . Earlier this July , doctor in Ecuadorreported extractinga two - pound trichobezoar from a woman ’s belly .
hairballsRapunzel syndromeWeird medicine
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