A medical case report from north-central Austria has revealed that smokers who suffered from chronic coughs and persistent throat irritation were found to have hair growing in their throats.

The 52-year-old male patient, whose name cannot be revealed in accordance with medical ethics, was about 35 years old when he presented to Kepler University Hospital in Linz with “nocturnal episodes of dyspnea, snoring, hoarseness and a chronic cough,” the statement said. Reports It was published on June 18. Medical researchers said the patient had coughed up hair up to 5 centimeters (about 2 inches) long during a coughing fit.

According to the report, he had been smoking since he was 20. At age 10, he nearly drowned, but accidentally damaged his larynx while administering first aid, requiring a tracheotomy and a skin graft to his trachea.

In the report, the researchers found that the patients' throats were narrowed and inflamed, with crusts, spots, and bacterial and fungal growth. “To their surprise, hair grew at the transplant sites,” the researchers wrote.

In their report, the researchers published images of a roughly two-inch strand of hair that had been found deep in the patient's throat. (Related article: Comedian undergoes emergency surgery after frightening diagnosis)

The 52-year-old man developed hair in his throat, a rare complication of decades of smoking. https://t.co/ZDVrVg4JIR pic.twitter.com/L8L75WDBPE

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) June 25, 2024

According to the report, treatment involved plucking the hair from the man's trachea, removing plaque and debris, and administering antibiotic therapy. Subsequent examination of his throat showed significant healing, although hair continued to grow from the implant site, down the inside of his throat, through his larynx, and into his mouth.

After several years of additional treatment, the hair disappeared and the tracheal scars healed, the report found. “Interestingly, there was a significant improvement in symptoms and function, particularly after the patients stopped smoking,” the researchers wrote.

According to the report, the researchers suggest that the patient's smoking caused cells from a skin graft in his throat to sprout hairs. The graft was taken from the patient's ear.

The frightening complication was part of an “unusual clinical course” and “rare,” according to the report: to the researchers' knowledge, there had been only one other documented case that was very similar, and that also required a tracheotomy and skin grafts.

The report was published in the American Journal of Case Reports. Four of the five authors (including the report's lead author, Paul Thone) are medical faculty at Johannes Kepler University Linz and pulmonologists at Kepler University Medical Center, according to the website. The fifth author is a pulmonologist at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria.