Medical team of a private hospital in Coimbatore recently removed a mass of hair and foreign particles of about half kg from a 13-year-old girl’s stomach.
The mass, known as trichobezoar in medical parlance, developed after the girl plucked her own hair and ingested it over a period of around six months, reportedly in a state of depression following the death of her relative.
After removing the mass in a laparoscopic procedure that lasted for about one-and-a-half hours, the girl was given psychiatric counselling.
V.G. Mohan Prasad, gastroenterologist and chairman of VGM Gastro Centre, said that the girl from Coimbatore had come to the hospital with complaints of severe stomach pain.
“The mass in the stomach was identified through an endoscopy and we decided to remove it through a laparoscopic surgery. Surgical gastroenterologist Gokul Kruba Shankar and team removed the mass using an ‘endobag’ so that not even a single strand of hair was left after the procedure,” he said.
Dr. Prasad said that it was the first case of a huge trichobezoar that doctors came across in his facility. The mass also contained remains of a shampoo sachet.
