2.5 kg of hair removed from woman's stomach in UP

Twenty-five-year-old Krushna Devi (name changed) had been suffering from trichophagia (compulsive eating of hair), but neither she nor her family members knew about the disorder for many years.

Excessive eating of hairs had resulted in trichobezoar (formation of hairball) in her stomach which resulted in unbearable pain, vomiting tendency and weight loss.
On Monday, doctors performed a surgery and pulled out two hairballs weighing 2.6 kilograms from her stomach.

A resident of Lalpur Bishnupur village in Uttar Pradesh’s Balrampur district, about 300 km from here, Krishna had been eating hairs for about 14 years, according to her family members.

Krishna was having severe stomach pain and she was losing weight sharply for the past few years. “We took her to many a doctors but they could not cure her,” said her mother.

Later, following an ultrasound examination, the hair balls were detected in her stomach. Doctors then performed a surgery to pull out the hairs. The surgery lasted over two hours.

“Krishna’s parents were very scared. They thought that their daughter had some incurable disease. They had spent a lot of money on her treatment,” said Dr Rakesh Chaudhary, who was among the team of doctors, which performed the surgery.