Alopecia revealing a gastric trichobezoar in a child
Leila Debono, Nour Mekaoui
Corresponding author: Leila Debono, Pediatric Medical Emergency, Children's Hospital of Rabat, Rabat, Morocco 
Received: 21 Jul 2025 - Accepted: 23 Jul 2025 - Published: 25 Jul 2025
Domain: Urgent Care Medicine, Pediatric gastroenterology, Pediatrics (general)
Keywords: Alopecia, trichobezoar, child
Funding: This work received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or non-profit sectors.
©Leila Debono et al. Pan African Medical Journal (ISSN: 1937-8688). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Cite this article: Leila Debono et al. Alopecia revealing a gastric trichobezoar in a child. Pan African Medical Journal. 2025;51:80. [doi: 10.11604/pamj.2025.51.80.48705]
Available online at: https://www.panafrican-med-journal.com//content/article/51/80/full
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Alopecia revealing a gastric trichobezoar in a child
Alopecia revealing a gastric trichobezoar in a child
Leila Debono1,2,&, Nour Mekaoui1,2,3
&Corresponding author
A 10-year-old girl, with no particular medical history, consulted the pediatric emergency room for alopecia and pallor observed by the mother for several months. The admission examination found a pale patient with mild alopecia over the frontal scalp but more pronounced at the eyebrows. The abdominal examination revealed a small, painless, and mobile epigastric mass, with no hepatomegaly or splenomegaly. The lymph node areas were free. Height and weight growth were normal according to age. The emergency abdominal ultrasound revealed that the mass corresponded to unidentified gastric contents, requiring additional computed tomography (CT) scanning. On the abdominal CT scan, the appearance was in favor of an endoluminal gastric mass, suggesting a trichobezoar. The history taken again in the young girl revealed trichophagia, of which the mother was unaware. The patient underwent surgical treatment after a transfusion due to the discovery of anemia, with good progress. The child was referred for psychiatric consultation for follow-up on her trichophagia.
Figure 1: eyebrow alopecia that revealed a trichobezoar
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