Mumbai doctors remove 750 gram hairball from woman's stomach

Mumbai doctors have removed 750 gram of hair from a woman's stomach. She was suffering from a rare condition Known as the Rapunzel Syndrome. The condition causes the person to pull out their own hair and consume it.

The woman was treated at Rajawadi hospital in Mumbai's Ghatkopar after Archana complained of nausea and an extremely swollen abdomen, even though she had gone through drastic weight loss in the last few months.

When she was admitted to the hospital, she weighed only 30 kilos. She was pale and had lost all appetite. The doctors ordered a CT scan and spotted a huge mass entangled in the stomach, Mid Day reported.

Rapunzel Syndrome

Rapunzel Syndrome is the name given to an extremely rare medical condition that arises when a person eats their own hair or hair extensions. The clinical term for the ingestion of hair is trichophagia and can have fatal consequences. As a result of the human body's inability to digest hair, any hair or synthetic fibre such as wool, that is eaten accumulates over time into a mottled, enmeshed mass in the digestive tract, blocking it. 

 Dr. Bharat Kamath, an assistant professor in the department of surgery at Rajawadi Hospital, who led the surgical team, said, "It had filled her stomach, due to which the patient was unable to eat. Moreover, a tail of hair trailed into her intestine, which is typical in a case of Rapunzel Syndrome," said Dr. Bharat.

The hairball was 25 cm long and about 10-12 cm across. Due to this, doctors believed that she had been eating her hairs for years. This irresistible eating of hair is called Trichophagia. Hair protein does not get digested, nor can the body pass it in a stool.