Doctors eliminate huge tufts of hair in the stomach of a 16-year-old girl with Rapunzel syndrome

In Russia, doctors removed a huge tuft of hair that had accumulated in the stomach of a teenager with Rapunzel syndrome.
Hairball removed from the stomach of adolescence
The unnamed 16 year old girl had been chewing her own hair for the past 10 years and these had accumulated in her stomach.
Doctors removed the ball of hair weighing more than 1 pound or about 454 grams during an emergency surgery in the Siberian city of Tomsk.
Andrey Karakaev, the chief operating physician at Clinic Number Two of the Emergency Medicine Clinic, said that 80% of his stomach was filled with hairball.
The doctors had to undergo urgent surgery because the girl's gastrointestinal tract was already at risk of being completely blocked.
The girl is recovering, but doctors have indicated that she may need psychiatric care.
Rapunzel Syndrome
Rapunzel, the fictional character of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale, is known for her long hair as she drops out of a window of the tower.
Rapunzel Syndrome
, which is named after this tale, is a rare medical condition that occurs when a person has a ball of hair on his stomach and that this ball has a "tail" that extends into the intestines.
The condition is linked
at other conditions such as trichophagy and trichotillomania. People who swallow their hair compulsively have a trichophagia with psychiatric disorder. People who have an irresistible urge to pull their hair suffer from trichotillomania.
Authors of a 2016 case report on Rapunzel syndrome wrote that the disease mainly affected children and adolescents.
"Rapunzel syndrome is an extremely rare condition badociated with trichophagy (hair-eating disorder) secondary to a psychiatric illness called trichotillomania (hair pulling behavior) .It is seen most often in children and teenagers, "they wrote.
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The hair can accumulate in the stomach and form in clumps
The stomach is unable to digest the hair. The hair is not biodegradable, so it can accumulate in the stomach and form a mbad in people who usually chew and swallow it.
This large mbad of hair called "trichobezoard" can cause nausea, vomiting and digestive problems. In some cases, it can cause a condition called peritonitis, or inflammation of the abdominal lining, which can lead to widespread inflammation that can lead to the closure of body organs.
Trichobezoar can cause an ulcer or open sore in the lining of the stomach. Once the ulcer has perforated the stomach, the hairball bacteria can spread into the abdominal cavity, which can cause infection and inflammation.
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