Bizzare: Man develops hair in throat due to...

In a bizarre medical case, a 52-year-old Austrian man developed an extremely rare condition known as endotracheal hair growth, where hair began growing inside his throat. This unusual condition required him to have the hair removed annually for 14 years due to his heavy smoking habit.

According to a report in the American Journal of Case Reports, the man first sought medical help in 2007, presenting with symptoms such as a hoarse voice, difficulty breathing, and a chronic cough. He revealed to doctors that he had been a heavy smoker since 1990 and had even coughed up a 5 cm long hair. The symptoms, he said, began in 2006.

Medical examination via bronchoscopy revealed several hairs growing from a spot in his throat where he had previously undergone surgery as a child. At age 10, following a near-drowning incident, the man had a tracheotomy—a procedure involving an incision in the trachea to facilitate breathing. The opening was later closed using a graft of skin and cartilage from his ear, which became the site of the hair growth.

Initially, doctors performed surgery to remove six to nine hairs, each about 2 inches long. However, the hairs kept growing back, necessitating annual hospital visits for their removal over the next 14 years.

Doctors attributed the persistent hair growth to the man's smoking habit. The condition only ceased after he quit smoking in 2022. Subsequently, doctors performed an endoscopic argon plasma coagulation procedure to burn the hair cells. A year after this procedure, two hairs were removed, and another coagulation was performed. Since then, no further hair growth has been reported.