This news may sound like a hoax, but it’s entirely true. A resident of Austria has been diagnosed with endotracheal hair growth, meaning hair is growing in his throat.
Experts say this anomaly is extremely rare, with only a few documented cases in medical literature. The causes of this condition remain unclear. However, doctors who have monitored the patient for years believe that his throat hair growth was triggered by 30 years of smoking.
How It Happened
In 2007, the man sought medical help due to a raspy voice, difficulty breathing, and a chronic cough. He reported that he had even coughed up hair on one occasion. The patient mentioned that he started smoking in 1990 at the age of 20 and also underwent throat surgery during his youth.
Doctors analyzed his symptoms and then inserted a small camera into his airways, discovering several strands of hair growing deep in his throat. They were promptly removed, but soon after, the hair grew back. Typically, the patient had between six to nine hairs, each about 5 centimeters long, some of which had even grown into his mouth.
Over the next 14 years, the man returned to the hospital for the same issue. Specialists removed the unwanted hair, which soon reappeared, as reported by the Daily Mail.
The condition was finally treated after the man quit smoking at the age of 52 in 2022. Doctors performed a complex procedure known as endoscopic argon plasma coagulation, which involves cauterizing the roots from which the hair grows. A year later, two more hairs were removed from his throat, and another coagulation was performed. Since then, no hair has grown back.
What Experts Are Saying
Experts assert that smoking can cause inflammation of the throat tissues, leading to the transformation of stem cells into hair follicles.
In discussing this case in the American Journal of Case Reports, the doctors suggested, “The hair growth was caused by cigarette smoking.”
The report’s authors also noted that the patient nearly drowned at the age of 10, which resulted in a tracheostomy (an opening in the airway located below the vocal cords), where an airway tube was inserted to assist with breathing. Later, the opening was closed using cartilage and skin from the patient’s ear. Subsequently, hair began to grow around the surgical site.