Rapunzel syndrome

Doctors find giant hairball in 12-year-old girl's stomach.

Doctors have found a 250 gram hairball inside a 12-year-old girl’s stomach after she complained of pains.

Schoolgirl Zhu Xiaoxin has since been diagnose with the rare condition called Rapunzel syndrome which is named after the 19th-century fairytale character created by the Brothers Grimm.

Sufferers compulsively eat their own hair, which ends up mostly in their stomach while a ‘tail’ obstructs their small intestine.

The schoolgirls’ parents told doctors at Lishui Central Hospital in eastern China that she had complained of stomach pains and had not had a bowel movement in four days.
“CT scans showed a foreign mass obstructing her bowels,” the hospital’s head of paediatrics Doctor Zhang Heng said.

“The obstruction was very obvious because her stomach contents could only be seen above and not below the object.”

However, neither the girl nor her parents were able to recall her ingesting anything out of the ordinary, leaving medics no choice but to take her into surgery.

Dr Zhang and his team then made the shocking discovery of the 250-gram ball of hair in her stomach.

The condition is caused by the eating of one’s own hair, known medically as trichophagia, which is associated with hair pulling, known as trichotillomania or ‘TTM’.

Hair eating has been linked with anxiety and stress, as well as psychological disorders such as pica – where patients tend to eat non-nutritive substances such as hair, chalk, glass, metal, paint or even faeces.

As pica has been linked to iron and zinc deficiency, Dr Zhang plans to treat the young patient accordingly.

“The first order of business after her surgery should be to cut her hair, then she needs to start taking iron and zinc supplements.

“She may also need to see a specialist,” he added.

The schoolgirl is expected to make a full recovery.