Doctors in Vadodara operated upon a 13-year-old girl on Thursday to remove a big lump of hair in her stomach measuring 50 cm.

After complaining of abdomen pain, Chandan Bariya of Sankariya village of Limkheda Taluka was admitted to the clinic of paediatric Samir Brahmbhatt.

After conducting tests, the doctors came to know that the girl was suffering from a rare psychological disorder known as Rapunzel syndrome, in which, a child pulls one’s hair out and then eat it. The condition normally occurs in teenage girls.

All this left the doctors stumped.

Pediatrician Samir Brahmbhatt said, “The patient came to us with pain in upper abdomen, vomiting and was unable to eat anything. We investigated her, got a CT scan and endoscopy done. The diagnosis revealed that the patient had a big ball of hair in the stomach, giving impression of hard lump.”

Following this, the doctors group decided to operate the girl to remove the lump. Due to her stomach problem, the girl had not eaten in a while and turned weak.

Dr. I V Shah, who operated upon her, said, “She had to be operated as she had not eaten anything due to the lump and had turned anaemic. She was administered two units of blood and later we removed a lump of hair weighing one kg from her stomach.”

The doctors kept the girl under observation for few days.

“We will be giving some psychiatric treatment to her in order to ensure that she does not start consuming hair again,” Dr. Brahmbhatt added.

The doctors also said that they would be publishing a paper about her to be published in medical journals.