A 16-12 months-Outdated Woman’s Abdomen Ache Turned Out to Be a Big Hairball

A 16-year-old lady’s mysterious gastrointestinal sickness turned out to have an particularly furry perpetrator behind it. Medical doctors found {that a} big hairball caught in her abdomen was the reason for her issues.

The lady’s medical doctors detailed the true life story of physique horror in a paper revealed this week within the New England Journal of Medication, as a part of an everyday phase highlighting uncommon circumstances that cross by the halls of the Massachusetts Normal Hospital in Boston. The case is a uncommon instance of a identified situation known as Rapuznel syndrome, one that may have life-threatening problems if not caught early sufficient. Whereas the lady did must endure weeks of worsening signs earlier than the invention was made, the medical doctors have been in a position to efficiently take away her hairball with no points.

Based on the report, the lady and her household visited an area emergency division 4 weeks after she started experiencing occasional bouts of vomiting and abdomen ache that finally turned excruciating (when requested to fee her ache on a scale from 1 to 10, she responded 8). Her preliminary check-up failed to search out any clear trigger for her sickness, and he or she was despatched residence with medicines to deal with the signs. The medicines did little to assuage her ache, which at instances would wake her up from sleeping. Following extra weeks of continued sickness, which included a second journey to the identical ED that yielded no solutions, the lady was lastly seen by the medical doctors at Mass Normal.

Given the dearth of different explanations, and the truth that her signs typically lessened proper after she vomited, her medical doctors finally suspected that she had gastric outlet obstruction, a situation attributable to a bodily blockage between the abdomen and small gut. Usually, this blockage is from a bezoar, a medical time period for any mass of overseas materials that will get trapped within the physique, however which is normally made from hair or fiber.

To search out out for certain, the medical doctors despatched down a tube and digicam to look at her higher gastrointestinal tract, and that’s when their suspicions have been confirmed. The lady had a hefty trichobezoar (furry bezoar) in her abdomen that had began to tangle its manner into the small gut. Whereas some trichobezoars are so massive that they will solely be eliminated surgically from the physique, the medical doctors have been in a position to safely extract the hair that prolonged into the small gut and take away the lady’s hairball by the tube alone. (For these with an NEJM subscription, right here’s a link to the image, however truthful warning: It’s fairly gnarly.)

Hairballs in people are normally attributable to trichophagia, a type of disordered consuming by which folks really feel compelled to swallow their hair. Trichophagia tends to be accompanied by trichotillomania, or the compulsion to tug out one’s personal hair. However when interviewed, the lady denied that she pulled her hair. Although there have been uncommon circumstances of trichobezoars not tied to trichotillomania, the medical doctors observe that folks typically really feel disgrace about having the situation and will not admit to it, so it’s nonetheless potential that this was the foundation reason for her hairball. Fortunately, the lady’s bodily restoration went easily, with no lingering abdomen ache reported a month later. And whereas she did decline a referral to a psychologist made by the medical doctors, she instructed them that she was planning to see a hypnotherapist beneficial by her buddies.

Circumstances of Rapunzel syndrome are uncommon, however amazingly sufficient, this isn’t the primary one to make waves in 2024. Earlier this July, medical doctors in Ecuador reported extracting a two-pound hairball from a lady’s abdomen.