ISTANBUL
By Nilay Kar Onum
A 30-year-old woman arrived at a hospital in Turkey’s western city of Bursa a week ago complaining of mysterious stomach pains, a loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting.
Doctors at Sevket Yilmaz Hospital examined the young housewife and checked her stomach through an endoscope. What they saw was shocking and made headlines around Turkey – a giant ball of human hair.
“When we talked to the woman, we learned that she had been eating her hair for 15 years,” said surgical specialist Volkan Arayici. The medic claimed it was the first time he had encountered such a case.
The source of the hairball was her habit of pulling hair out of her scalp by the root and eating it.
'Trichophagia' is the name given to the compulsive eating of hair. It is related to ‘trichotillomania’ or hair-pulling, which is an impulse disorder compelling people to pull out their hair, eyelashes, eyebrows, chest hair or beard.
Doctors decided to operate on her after they realized that it was not possible to remove the hairball with an endoscope. The operation lasted for one hour.
“Her stomach was full of hair. We took a ball of hair weighing 850 grams from the stomach .The ball was shaped like the stomach,” Arayici said.
He stated that the patient had psychological problems.
Other than her mental health, “her condition is good now”, the specialist surgeon said. The woman – who has remained anonymous – was discharged on Wednesday, just a day after her surgery said Mehmet Fidan, a hospital spokesman.
There are around 1.5 million people with trichotillomania in Turkey, according to Istanbul-based psychiatrist Gokben Hizli Sayar.
“They mostly receive treatment very late as they do not want to talk about it and are ashamed. So they generally continue this habit for years,” says another psychiatrist, Aysegul Sutcu Yildirim.
“Some of them just eat hair follicles, while the others prefer to eat the whole hair,” says Sayar. “Eating the whole hair causes bowel obstruction after a while, which may result in death if patients do not see a doctor.”
The disorder is often chronic and families’ approaches are very important, experts say.
“They should not accuse them, should not tell them not to eat any more or leave this habit immediately,” Yildlrim says: “If families do these kinds of things, patients will feel worse and will not want to see a doctor.”
According to health experts, the peak age for this condition is between 12 and 13 years old.
Treatment varies depending on the patient and can take the form of medicine, cognitive therapies or psychoanalytic methods.
“Cognitive therapies are important and could be effective [in treating the disorder],” Sayar says.
Sometimes, however, the treatment may not be effective in the long term.
“The disorder mostly reoccurs when they are under stress and during hard times,” Yildirim adds.
So, although the patient in Bursa has been treated for now, this remarkable condition still poses a fatal risk to those who refuse to get help.
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