A 17- year- old female high school student, with no remarkable medical history, presented to the emergency department with hematemesis and melena. She reported anorexia, weakness and a mild chronic epigastric pain during the last three months, with unrecorded weight loss.
At presentation, the patient was thin. She had no apparent depressive or psychotic symptoms.
Her physical examination showed stable vital signs and a pale skin. Her BMI was 18Kg/m² but without clinical signs of nutrient deficiency. Abdominal examination revealed a palpable large, mobile, non-tender and ill-defined solid mass in the epigastric and periumbilical region.
The laboratory tests showed hypochromic microcystic anemia with a hemoglobin level of 7.7g/dl and a mean corpuscular volume of 64 fl. Renal and hepatic functions were within the reference range.
Upper endoscopy revealed an enormous hairball occupying the whole gastric cavity without active bleeding (Figure 1). A longitudinal gastrostomy was performed and a huge mass, measuring 20 ×15 cm and shaped like the stomach, was extracted (Figure 2). The patient discharged home after 6 days, in a good general condition, and was referred to a psychiatrist.
Figure 1. Endoscopic view of the trichobezoar
Figure 2. A huge Stomach-shaped hair ball after being extracted from the stomach
Editorial Information
Editor-in-Chief
Kleanthis Giannoulis
Thessaloniki School of Medicine, Greece
Article Type
Clinical Image
Publication history
Received: December 17, 2020
Accepted: December 28, 2020
Published: December 30, 2020
Copyright
©2020 Hammami A. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation
Hammami A, Nasr S, Elleuch N (2020) Upper Gastrointestinal bleeding secondary to an enormous hairball. Glob Surg 6: DOI: 10.15761/GOS.1000225.
Corresponding author
Aya Hammami
Faculty of medicine of Sousse, University of Sousse, Sousse, Tunisia
E-mail : bhuvaneswari.bibleraaj@uhsm.nhs.uk