1kg Hairball Removed From Stomach Of Child Eating Hair For Attention

Doctors in China's eastern Jiangsu province removed a hairball that weighed around 2 pounds from the stomach of a girl who ate human hair to gain her parents' attention, according to a viral video report from mainland China.

The 9-year-old was presented at a local hospital in the city of Suqian with symptoms including nausea and vomiting, South China Morning Post reported, citing a Sunday video report by Lizhi News.

Zhao Chengguang, the gastroenterologist in charge of the child's case, discovered that a hairball weighing almost a kilogram (2.2 pounds) was inside the girl's stomach.

"The hair was mixed with food and gastric juice inside the stomach and had formed a globular shape," Zhao was quoted as saying in the report, which has garnered millions of views on social media.

Doctors were able to remove the hairball, but the procedure took more than 10 hours to finish due to the girl's young age and narrow esophagus.

They later learned that the girl attempted to get her parents' attention by swallowing hair, according to Zhao.

Pica, an eating disorder in which a person eats things not usually considered food, is often found among children and is usually triggered by psychological issues, the doctor explained.

"We advised her parents that it would be better to provide her with psychological treatment to prevent it from happening again," Zhao said.

People who saw the story were reportedly surprised that the parents had not discovered the girl's mental illness sooner, with many labeling them as "irresponsible."

"The parents had really not been caring for the child, so it took them a long time to find out," one user on Douyin, the Chinese name for TikTok, commented.

"Poor child! Children who receive insufficient parental care are more likely to develop psychological problems," another person wrote.

In a similar story, a 1-kilogram hairball was found in the stomach of a 14-year-old girl from China's Hangzhou city back in December 2020.

The girl ate hair for over a year due to a lack of attention from her parents following the birth of her younger sibling, a doctor discovered.