Endoscopists in southern China spent roughly 15 hours inside a 7-year-old girl's stomach, slicing a tightly packed hairball away in thin layers, a motion they described as "analogous to peeling fruit or planing wood," after standard grabbing tools failed. The mass measured about 12 by 6 centimeters, or nearly 4.7 by 2.4 inches, and stretched from the top of her stomach to the bottom.
The case, published Oct. 1 in Frontiers in Medicine by a team from the Xiaolan Clinical Institute of Shantou University Medical College in Zhongshan, describes a giant gastric trichobezoar, the medical term for a hairball made of swallowed hair. What made this one so stubborn was not just its size. Abundant cotton threads woven through it resisted nearly everything the doctors tried.
