Clump of hair removed from 6-year-old girl’s intestine in Ludhiana
The girl, suffering from trichophagiais, had been eating her hair for the past six months and developed abdomen pain in her intestine after the hair accumulated.
Doctors at a private hospital here successfully removed a clump of hair from the small intestine of a six-year-old girl, who had pulled her hair and eaten it. The girl, according to doctors was suffering from trichophagiais, compulsive eating of hair associated with trichotillomania (hair pulling).
Doctors said because of this habit, she had developed Rapunzel syndrome, an extremely rare intestinal condition in humans resulting from ingesting hair (trichophagia). The syndrome is named after the long-haired girl Rapunzel in the fairy tale by Brothers Grimm.
The girl had been eating her hair for the past six months and developed abdomen pain in her intestine after the hair accumulated.
The incident came to light when Gurjot started complaining of stomach ache. When Gurjot’s parents took her for a checkup at Anmol Hospital near Pakhowal Road, the doctors conducted an ultrasound and spotted a round-like substance in her stomach.
Later, when the child underwent endoscopy, doctors came to know that Gurjot was in the habit of swallowing her own hair. On being asked, surgeon Dr Daljeet Singh said, “The children, who feel alone or their parents do not give proper time to them mostly suffer from psychiatric maladies. In this case, parents of Gurjot said that their child had been eating hair for the past six months but, as per the huge size of the bunch, it seems that she had been doing so since her childhood. She was suffering from Rapunzel syndrome”. He said, “The patient was also allergic to wheat”.