22 November 2007

Doctors untangle the strange case of the giant hairball

As CNN reports, this is quite a case for the surgeons!

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. 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
After learning the medical term for a hairball, we have done one better on CNN.
Our operative was sent to make a photo of the real hairball instead of the one CNN displays in that article. Here it is (pregnant women and children are advised to refrain from clicking):





You have been warned!







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