Researchers noted a man growing hair in his throat after years of smoking.
This rare case was presented in the American Journal of Case Reports in mid-June. The unidentified 52-year-old male patient saw a doctor in 2007, about 17 years after he started smoking. He suffered from hoarseness, difficulty breathing and a chronic cough.
Bronchoscopy showed inflammation and some hairs in the throat in the area where previous surgery had been performed. The man was diagnosed with endotracheal hair growth.
Before that, at the age of 10, he almost drowned and was treated with a tracheostomy to stabilize his breathing. The surgeon closes the wound using skin and cartilage from the ear. Later, hair grew around the graft site, causing him to cough and have difficulty breathing. Doctors can pull these hairs out, but this is not a long-term solution. The hairs continuously grew back, and the patient was in and out of the hospital for 14 years, complaining of recurring symptoms.
Normally, his throat has 6 to 9 5 cm hairs, some of which grow long through the throat to the mouth. Besides having the hair removed, the man was also treated with antibiotics because the hair contained many bacteria.
By 2022, doctors have found a way to completely treat this condition. They asked the patient to stop smoking, performed endoscopic argon plasma coagulation – burned the growing hair root.
There are currently 28.3 million smokers in the US, but very few people have endotracheal hair growth. The doctor said this is the second case reported. In the man’s case, the team of doctors believed that the cause was his smoking habit. Cigarette smoke causes inflammation of throat tissue, which can cause stem cells to turn into hair follicles, thereby creating conditions for hair to grow.