Doctors of Hanoi-based Vietnam-Germany Hospital recently conducted an operation to take a bun of hair weighing 0.5kg from the stomach of a 9-year-old Vietnamese-Russian girl.The girl, Vika Ermiskina, visited her home country on the occasion of Hanoi’s 1000th anniversary. She couldn’t eat anything, just drank milk. Whenever she ate rice, she vomited.

The Vietnam-Germany Hospital’s doctors made a scan and discovered a bun of hairs in her stomach. They performed a surgery to take the hair out on October 4. The girl left the hospital one week later.

The hospital’s Deputy Director Tran Binh Giang said this case is called Rapunzel syndrome. This is an extremely rare intestinal condition in humans resulting from eating hair (trichophagia). The syndrome is named after the long-haired girl Rapunzel in the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. Trichophagia is sometimes associated with the hair pulling disorder trichotillomania.

The girl told doctors that she had eaten her hair for a very long time but her parents didn’t know. She has shown symptoms of tiredness and weight loss for a year.

“In Russia, children often take liquid cooking like soup or milk so the Rapunzel syndrome was not clear. When she ate rice, symptoms began to show more clearly, including vomiting or stomachache,” Dr. Giang analysed.

PV