“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, put that hair down!”
A 17-year-old woman from the UK is recovering well after doctors discovered that a five-foot hairball had literally been torn through her stomach.
A new report in BMJ Case Reports describes the horrific circumstances of the teen with ‘Rapunzel’ syndrome, who compulsively consumed her own hair – enough to collect a hairball, in the clinical setting called a trichobezoar, which is 19 inches tall and filled her hair all over. stomach, according to doctors at Queen’s Medical Center in Nottingham.
The patient was taken to the hospital after two mysterious episodes of fainting in which her face was bruised. Doctors soon ruled out that a head injury was the cause after noticing swelling in the woman’s upper abdomen. She had also described intermittent abdominal pain in the past five months, which had become more severe in the two weeks prior to hospitalization.
A computed tomography (CT) scan then revealed a large mass in her “very distended stomach” and a tear in the organ lining – at which point the patient’s mental health problems became apparent.
The teenager had a known history of trichotillomania, characterized by the urge to pull out his hair, as well as trichophagia, which is compulsive eating of hair.
Both conditions are rare, as only 0.5% and 3% of people experience trichotillomania; An estimated 10% to 30% of trichotillomania cases are associated with trichophagia, Live Science reports. And a 2019 study in the pancreas found that of those who suffer from both conditions, only 1% will develop a hairball in the gastrointestinal tract.
The hairy specimen had grown so large that after surgical removal, doctors discovered that the trichobezoar had “formed a cast of the entire stomach,” they wrote.
The patient is lucky: hairballs of this size have been deadly – as in a 16-year-old girl from the UK in 2017, who died of Rapunzel syndrome after the trichobezoar caused a deadly infection.
After psychiatric evaluation and postoperative healing, the woman was released within seven days of the procedure. After a month, the doctors reported that she was “making good progress with nutritional advice” and that she regularly visited a therapist.
