Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Pass The Catsup Please


art.hairball.nejm.jpg NOT GRANDMA'S SUGAR CURED HAM



CNN) -- It may not be the most appetizing reading before a hearty holiday meal, but the New England Journal of Medicine is devoting part of its Thanksgiving issue to a giant hairball -- and not the feline kind.art.hairball.nejm.jpgDoctors say this hairball removed from a woman's stomach weighed 10 pounds.The prestigious journal details the case of a previously healthy 18-year-old woman who consulted a team of gastrointestinal specialists.She complained of a five-month history of pain and swelling in her abdomen, vomiting after eating and a 40-pound weight loss.After a scan of the woman's abdomen showed a large mass, doctors lowered a scope through her esophagus.It revealed "a large bezoar occluding nearly the entire stomach," wrote Drs. Ronald M. Levy and Srinadh Komanduri, gastroenterologists at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois.For the uninitiated, a bezoar is a hairball."On questioning, the patient stated that she had had a habit of eating her hair for many years -- a condition called trichophagia," they wrote.Doctors untangle the strange case of the giant hairball - CNN.com

And a redhead at that. On the upside hair is known to be low-fat and low-cholestoral.

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