Woman Coughs Up 10 Pound Hairball

YOUR cat coughs up hair. And it is revolting.

But the New England Journal of Medicine has seen worse.

Doctors say this hairball removed from the stomach of a healthy 18-year-old woman weighed 10 pounds.

She complained of a five-month history of pain and swelling in her abdomen, vomiting after eating and a 40-pound weight loss…

It revealed “a large bezoar occluding nearly the entire stomach,” wrote Drs. Ronald M. Levy and Srinadh Komanduri, gastroenterologists at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois…

“On questioning, the patient stated that she had had a habit of eating her hair for many years — a condition called trichophagia,” they wrote.

The woman underwent surgery to remove the mass of black, curly hair, which weighed 10 pounds and measured 15 inches by 7 inches by 7 inches, the doctors said.

Five days later, she was eating normally and was sent home.

Was it all her own hair?

Anorak

Posted: 21st, January 2008 | In: Strange But True Comments (4) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink