Representational Image of a cigarette. (Image: X)
Hyderabad: After smoking a pack of cigarettes every day for years, a 52-year-old Austria man began to experience an extremely rare condition-hair growing inside his throat. This unique case, reported in the American Journal of Case Reports, shows the unexpected and sometimes serious complications that long-term smoking can cause.
In 2007, the man first visited a doctor due to trouble breathing, a hoarse voice, and a cough that wouldn't go away. Doctors used a bronchoscope to examine him and found inflammation and surprisingly, there were several hairs growing in his throat, particularly in the area that had undergone surgery following a near-drowning incident when he was a kid.
The man had undergone tracheotomy, a treatment that created an opening in his windpipe. This opening was stabilized using a skin and cartilage graft taken from his ear. Suddenly, this grafted area became the improbable place where hair began to grow.
The man was diagnosed by doctors with endotracheal hair growth, a very rare illness that had only been reported in one other case before. These hairs, which grew into his voice box and even into his mouth, were typically six to nine in number and around two inches long. Because of this, he had to go to the hospital annually for 14 years, to get them removed.
Despite being momentarily alleviated by extracting the hair and treating the infected follicles with antibiotics, the hair continued to grow back.
Things for the man finally began to improve in 2022. He took a big decision and gave up smoking! Endoscopic argon plasma coagulation is a new procedure that doctors can now conduct because of this beneficial advancement. By burning the hair at its very root, this method stops future regrowth by the use of focused energy.
( Source : PTI )
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