In mid-June, a rare case of a man growing hair in his throat after years of smoking was documented in the American Journal of Case Reports. The unidentified 52-year-old male patient had been smoking for about 17 years when he began experiencing hoarseness, difficulty breathing, and a chronic cough in 2007. During a bronchoscopy, inflammation and hairs were found in his throat near a previous surgical site.
The man’s condition was traced back to a tracheostomy he received at the age of 10 after nearly drowning. The surgeon used skin and cartilage from his ear to close the wound, which later led to hair growth around the graft site. Doctors were able to remove the hairs multiple times over the course of 14 years, but they continued to grow back due to inflammation caused by his smoking habit.
In addition to having the hairs physically removed, the patient was treated with antibiotics due to the presence of bacteria in the hair. By 2022, doctors had developed a treatment plan for this condition. They advised the patient to quit smoking and performed a procedure called endoscopic argon plasma coagulation to burn the hair roots, preventing regrowth. While there are millions of smokers in the U.S., cases of endotracheal hair growth are extremely uncommon, with this being only the second reported instance.
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