1.5kg Hair Removed from Indian Woman’s Stomach who Ate It

In a strange medical case in Dungarpur in Rajasthan, India, doctors at Haridev Joshi General Hospital conducted an operation where they extracted one and a half kilograms of hair from a 24-year-old woman’s stomach.

The successful operation which took place on Friday, August 30, 2019, was treating a rare disease called Trichobezoar in the young woman.

The condition is common in young females and is related to the habit of chewing and eating hair. This leads to the formation of hair gathering in the stomach because it is undigestable and due to its smooth nature cannot be expelled with normal bowel movement.

This explained the hair in the woman’s abdomen.

The woman often complained of a stomach ache because of the undiscovered bunch of hair. She was finding it very hard to eat and began losing weight gradually. She frequently vomited while she was eating.

The woman was admitted into the hospital and a full CT scan was done on her, which revealed the large bunch of hair gathered in her stomach.

After a thorough examination of the woman, it was also found that the patient was mentally unwell and had the habit of eating hair.

Doctors talked to family members and subsequently had the go-ahead to commence the operation.

The woman was very low on haemoglobin at only 6.8 grams in her blood, so she was given two units of blood during the operation. Once they opened the patient up, doctors found the hair bunched up in her intestine and carefully extracted it.

The team of five doctors and nurses, namely, Dr Mahendra Damore, Dr Rajesh Rota, Dr Deepika Tailor, Dr Ram Singh, Dr Saroj Meena, Rakesh Ahari, Pushpa Katara and Sheela Bhagora conducted the delicate operation.

Doctors said that the hair had gathered in the woman’s stomach over time.

This was over a period of at least four years in this case.

The undigested hair kept gathering in the stomach slowly and the size of the hair pulp gradually increased. Hence, why the woman complained of stomach ache, inability to eat and vomiting.

Medications can be given to get it out of the body but on most occasions, it is not effective. In this case, surgery was the only option left.

Trichobezoar has a common link with an underlying psychiatric illness and it became evident that the patient had issues related to mental illness.

This case of Trichobezoar was the first operation of this kind to be treated by doctors at the medical college hospital in Dungarpur.