‘Poor child’: doctors in China find 1kg hairball in stomach of girl eating human hair for attention due to condition known as Pica
- A young girl was taken to hospital in China with symptoms including nausea and vomiting
- After a 10-hour procedure, they removed a 1kg ball of human hair from her stomach and diagnosed her with the psychological condition Pica
A video report about a young girl eating human hair to gain attention who ended up in hospital has gone viral in mainland China with millions of views on social media.
On Sunday, Lizhi News reported that the nine-year-old girl presented at a local hospital in Suqian, Jiangsu province, eastern China, with symptoms including nausea and vomiting. The gastroenterologist in charge of the girl’s case, Zhao Chengguang, discovered a hairball weighing almost 1kg in the girl’s stomach.
“The hair was mixed with food and gastric juice inside the stomach and had formed a globular shape,” Zhao said.
Doctors removed the hairball in a procedure taking more than 10 hours due to the girl’s young age and narrow oesophagus.
“We then learned that she was trying to get her parents’ attention by swallowing hair,” Zhao said. “So we advised her parents that it would be better to provide her with psychological treatment to prevent it from happening again.”
Many who saw the story were surprised that the parents had not discovered the girl’s mental illness sooner, with many accusing them of being “irresponsible”.
