About 2 kilograms of human hair has been extracted by doctors in Bareilly from inside a 21-year-old woman. She had been ingesting her own hair for the past 16 years.
Clinically referred to as trichophagia, or Rapunzel Syndrome, this psychological condition involves individuals who compulsively pull out and ingest their own hair.
In the woman’s case, the ingested hair had completely “captured the cavity” of her stomach and even some part of her intestine. The woman, a resident of Kargaina, was diagnosed with the condition on September 20 after a CT scan revealed an accumulation of hair.
“Trichophagia is a chronic psychiatric disorder that involves the repeated ingestion of hair. It’s often associated with trichotillomania, a condition that involves compulsively pulling out one’s own hair,” Dr MP Singh, a surgeon at the district hospital in Bareilly, said.
After being counselled, the 21-year-old accepted that she had been eating her hair since she was five years old. On September 26, surgeons performed an operation to remove the hair from her body.
“The quantity of hair had completely captured the cavity of her stomach and even some part of her intestine,” Dr Singh said. The condition prevented the patient from eating solid foods and caused vomiting whenever she consumed liquids.