A man who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years experienced a rare complication from his habit that caused hair to grow deep in his throat.
The patient visited the doctor in 2007 complaining of a hoarse voice, difficulty breathing, and a chronic cough. He told doctors that he had started smoking in 1990, when he was 20 years old, and that he had already reported a case in which he had coughed up a hair.
Based on his symptoms, doctors performed a procedure that allowed them to guide a small camera through the patient’s airways and discovered several hairs growing in an area of his throat where he had previously had surgery.
While the medical team was able to remove the hairs, they continued to grow back and the patient would return to the hospital every year for the next 14 years with the same symptoms.
The condition was only treated once the man, now 52, stopped smoking and doctors burned the hair cells in his throat in 2022, preventing them from returning.
Shown above is a scan of the individual’s throat, with arrows pointing to places where the windpipe (or trachea) has contracted.
The images above show hairs that were in the man’s throat. Doctors removed them every year for 14 years. Doctors finally stopped the hairs once the man quit smoking.
The man, from Austria, was diagnosed with endotracheal hair growth, or hair that grows in the throat.
The condition is extremely rare and only a few cases are recorded in the medical literature. The causes are unclear and the authors of the case report said this was only the second such case.
Doctors claimed, however, that in this case the growth had been caused by smoking.
Experts said smoking can cause inflammation in throat tissue, which can cause stem cells to develop into hair follicles, or a group of cells and structures in which hair grows.
There were usually six to nine two-inch hairs in the man’s throat, and some had managed to pass through his larynx and grow into his mouth.
Revealing the case in the American Journal of Case ReportsThe doctors said: ‘Our hypothesis is that the onset of hair growth was triggered by the patient’s smoking.
‘(This) may have induced and stimulated endotracheal hair growth. (But of course this assumption cannot be proven due to the rarity of these cases.’
Doctors also noted that the patient had nearly drowned at the age of 10, which had caused his trachea, the part of the trachea below the larynx, to be cut to allow an air tube to be placed so he could breathe.
The opening was then closed with cartilage and skin from the ear, and hair growth was detected around the transplanted site in the throat.
About 28.3 million Americans smoke, or one in 10 people, although it is extremely rare for the habit to cause throat hair to grow.
The patient reported that his symptoms began in 2006, approximately 16 years after he started smoking.
He complained of difficulty breathing at night, hoarseness, snoring, and chronic cough.
When he first sought medical help in 2007, doctors also found swelling in his throat and scabs that had formed.
In addition to removing them, he was treated with antibiotics as doctors discovered that the hairs were covered in bacteria.
Over the next almost 15 years, the man visited doctors again for further checks and repeated extractions.
Each time they removed the hair, they said the patient was immediately relieved of his symptoms.
Despite the chronic condition, doctors did not want to perform the curative procedure until the man quit smoking, which he did in 2020.
The hair growth finally stopped after doctors performed endoscopic argon plasma coagulation (burning the root from which hair grows) when the patient was 49 years old.
One year after this procedure, two throat hairs were removed and another coagulation was performed. Since then no hair has grown back.