Indian Teen Gets Huge Furball Removed From Stomach Because She Can’t Stop Eating Her Hair

Doctors had to perform an operation on a 15-year-old Indian teenager after she was diagnosed with “Rapunzel Syndrome.”

The teenager from Punjab, India was admitted to a hospital after she was not able to eat or drink anything, Daily Mail reported. After she was scanned, doctors were surprised to see a massive clump of hair in her stomach which called for immediate surgery.

Doctors diagnosed the teenager suffers with “Rapunzel Syndrome” after finding that she had a history of trichotillomania, wherein a person has uncontrollable urges to pull out his/her own hair, and trichophagia, where the sufferer eats the hair that was pulled out.

It was revealed that the girl had been chewing on her hair for a few years and had eaten so much that she would start to vomit every time she ate.

The “Rapunzel Syndrome” is considered a rare case with only less than 120 patients reported in medical literature. According to doctors who are writing in the journal BMJ Case Reports, this unique kind of syndrome almost always affects young women.

It is also predominant in young people who have learning disabilities or those who are emotionally disturbed. A person with this kind of syndrome has hairballs that accumulate in the gastrointestinal tract which is called bezoar. It forms in the stomach and extends its “tail” in the small intestine.

The video below, uploaded last year, shows a similar procedure performed on another woman. Warning, this is a graphic procedure:

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