A medical team at a private hospital in Matrouh, Egypt, performed surgery on a 27-year-old patient, extracting 3 kilograms of hair from his stomach, as reported by the Egyptian newspaper "Al-Watan." The paper added that the patient was suffering from severe stomach pain, and upon examination and imaging, something unclear was found inside his stomach.
During the three-hour delicate surgery, the doctors extracted a mass of black hair that had accumulated over the years due to the patient’s habit of eating hair. The medical team explained that the patient frequently consumed the hair from his mustache. The newspaper quoted the head of the medical team stating that the patient’s case is very rare, and he has not encountered a similar one in Egypt, despite nearly 40 years of experience as a surgical specialist in several countries.
Dr. Tarek Al-Kasih, a general surgery consultant in Matrouh, mentioned that he had been monitoring the case for a year, initially believing it to be a tumor in the abdomen and stomach. However, the situation became clearer two months before the surgery when a piece of hair was found in the patient's stool, whereas the ultrasound had only indicated a tumor. Al-Kasih noticed that the patient's hair was thinning and discovered that he was pulling the hairs from his mustache, head, and beard. Over ten years of this condition led to the formation of a large mass of hair in his stomach, causing him significant suffering.
