Austrian man, who smoked cigarettes for 30 years, developed hair inside throat. Then…

A 52-year-old Austrian man who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years developed a rarest of rare condition - endotracheal hair growth. This means that hair started growing inside his throat. To make matters worse, he had to have the hair plucked out for 14 years as it kept growing due to his smoking habit.

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According to a report in the American Journal of Case Reports, the patient first visited doctors in 2007, complaining of hoarse voice, difficulty breathing and chronic cough. He told doctors of coughing out a 5 cm long hair once and mentioned that he had been smoking cigarettes since 1990. He also reported that the symptoms began in 2006.

The doctors then performed a bronchoscopy on him and found several hair growing from an area in his throat where he had previously undergone surgery, following a near-drowning incident in childhood.

At age 10, the man had undergone a tracheotomy - which involved having his trachea cut open to allow an air tube to be put in place to help oxygen reach his lungs. The opening was later closed using a skin and cartilage graft from his ear, and this area subsequently became the site of hair growth.

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The doctors then performed surgery on him and removed six to nine 2-inch long hair, but they grew back. For 14 years straight, the man visited the hospital every year to get them plucked out.

As per the doctors, the hair growth stemmed from his habit of smoking cigarettes. The condition stopped only after the man quit smoking in 2022, and the doctors performed an endoscopic argon plasma coagulation, which involves burning the hair cells.

A year after this procedure, two hair were removed from the throat and another coagulation was performed. Since then, no hair growth has been reported.