Hair started growing in man's throat: Doctors say it's because of smoking

July 2, 2024  00:51

A 52-year-old man from Austria, who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years, faced a rare complication - in his throat began to grow hair. About it writes the publication Daily Mail.

The patient went to the doctors with complaints of a hoarse voice, difficulty breathing and chronic cough, writes Focus. He was immediately sent to a special procedure to pass a small camera through the airways. Thus it was possible to detect a few hairs that grew from that part of the throat, where the man once had an operation (transplanted skin from the ear).

The hairs were removed, but they continued to grow back, so the Austrian repeatedly sought help for many years. The disorder was cured only after he stopped smoking and decided to undergo endoscopic argon plasma coagulation - burning the root from which the hair grows.

According to experts, only a few similar cases have been described in the medical literature. The causes of the disease have not yet been studied, but doctors say that in this case the growth was triggered specifically by smoking, which can cause inflammation of tissues in the throat and lead to the transformation of stem cells into hair follicles.

"We hypothesize that the growth of hair in the throat was triggered specifically by a bad habit," summarized the authors of the paper in the scientific journal American Journal of Case Reports.

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