Surgeons in Ecuador were able to save a 24-year-old woman from an especially hairy situation. Over the course of 45 minutes, they successfully extracted a giant mass of hair from the woman’s stomach. The hairball had gotten so massive over time that it could be felt from the outside.
The hair-raising tale was detailed by doctors at Verdi Cevallos Balda General Hospital. According to their report, the hair had become lodged in the woman’s stomach over at least the past two years. It caused her intense stomach pain, frequent vomiting, and increasing difficulty ingesting food and liquids. By the time she was seen by doctors at Verdi Cevallos, she had experienced significant weight loss from not eating.
The mass that doctors pulled from her stomach was measured to be 16 inches long and weighed 2 pounds. The hair had gotten so large that it was starting to snake into the woman’s intestines. It’s technically known as a bezoar, a medical term for any mass of foreign material that gets trapped in the body. Bezoars usually occur in the digestive tract and are often made of swallowed hair or fiber.
“It was a mass that occupied the entire gastric cavity and could even be identified by touch from the outside,” said lead surgeon Pedro Lovato in a statement from the hospital (translated using Google).
The report doesn’t go into much detail about why the woman swallowed so much hair. But according to Lovato, the woman was diagnosed with a “psychoemotional” ailment. Hairy bezoars are a known complication of trichophagiaa form of disordered eating where people feel compelled to swallow their hair. This particular complication has also been nicknamed Rapuznel syndromea reference to the long-haired fairy tale character. Trichophagia is often accompanied by trichotillomania, or the compulsion to pull out your own hair.
According to the doctors, the surgery not only saved the woman from life-threatening starvation but was done in time to prevent serious injuries to the stomach. The woman was discharged from the hospital and is reportedly receiving comprehensive follow-up care.
