Gaby
This may sound like a hoax, but it’s true. A resident of Austria was diagnosed with endotracheal hair growth — hair growing inside his throat.
The anomaly is extremely rare, with only a few documented cases in the medical literature. The causes remain unclear. But doctors who monitored the patient for years believe his throat hair growth was triggered by 30 years of smoking.
How It Happened
In 2007, the man sought medical help for a raspy voice, difficulty breathing, and a chronic cough. He said he had even coughed up hair on one occasion. The patient reported that he began smoking in 1990 at age 20 and had undergone throat surgery during his youth.
Doctors examined his symptoms and inserted a small camera into his airways, discovering several strands of hair growing deep in his throat. They removed the hairs, but soon after they grew back. Typically, the patient had between six and nine hairs, each about 5 centimeters long, and some had even grown into his mouth.
Over the next 14 years, the man returned to the hospital for the same problem. Specialists removed the unwanted hair, which soon reappeared, according to the Daily Mail.
The condition was finally treated after the man quit smoking at age 52 in 2022. Doctors performed a procedure called endoscopic argon plasma coagulation, which cauterizes the roots where 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 Doctors Found
Doctors say smoking can cause inflammation of throat tissue, which may trigger stem cells to transform into hair follicles.
In a discussion of the case in the American Journal of Case Reports, the doctors wrote, “The hair growth was caused by cigarette smoking.”
The report’s authors also noted that the patient nearly drowned at age 10, which led to a tracheostomy — an opening in the airway below the vocal cords where a breathing tube was inserted. Later, the opening was closed using cartilage and skin from the patient’s ear. After that, hair began to grow around the surgical site.
