A Chinese teenager had a hairball weighing three kilograms removed from her stomach this week after being admitted to a hospital because she was too sick to eat, South China Morning Post reported.
The girl, who hails from Shaanxi province, suffers from a condition called Pica, in which people compulsively eat dirt, paper, clay and other non-edible items.
She pulled her hair (behaviour associated with trichotillomania) so much that she went almost bald, the report said.
A doctor who treated her said there was so much hair in her stomach that there was no more space for food.
The child was taken in for a two-hour surgery, during which doctors removed a hair clump weighing 3 kg from her body.
Her grandparents, who brought her up because her parents lived away for work, reportedly did not notice the disorder till it became too serious, the report said.
The child's doctor said she may have been distressed for many years.
"I hope, more generally, that parents can spend more time with those left-behind children,” he added.
In at least one case, hair-eating has proved fatal. A UK teenager had died in 2017 because of an infected hairball in her stomach.