A man holds his cigarette as he smokes. (Representative Image)
Credit: Reuters Photo
A report in the American Journal of Case Reports has found that a 52-year-old Australian man developed a rare condition in which he experienced hair growth in his throat, possibly due to smoking.
Doctors suspect heavy usage of tobacco to be the cause of this condition. The man smoked heavily for almost 30 years, the paper said.
According to the paper, the man first sought medical attention at the age of 35 when he experienced symptoms of respiratory distress attacks at night, snoring, hoarseness, and chronic coughing and also coughed out a hair 5 cm in length.
Doctors initially removed the hair by plucking them out and gave him a course of antibiotics treatment as the hair had bacterial growth. This procedure had to be repeated annually and provided only temporary relief as the hair regrowth could not be stopped.
The patient had a history of a throat surgery at age 10 after a near drowning incident. The surgery involved placing an air tube in his trachea to help oxygen reach his lungs. Skin and cartilage graft from his ear was used for reconstruction of the tracheal defect following the surgery. This is where the endotracheal hair growth occurred.
Finally, the issue was solved when the patient quit smoking and doctors performed an endoscopic argon plasma coagulation. After a year of this procedure, only two hair growth were observed and the process was repeated following which no hair growth was observed.