A 11-year-old boy has hair growing all over his face and body, a rare medical anomaly. And doctors say that laser treatment or plastic surgery is the only way out.
Prithviraj Patil, son of a well-to-do farmer in Sangalwadi near Sangli, suffers from a rare medical anomaly though he is otherwise like any normal child.Prithiviraj has no problem with his hair that is up to three-inches long except that it looks awful - there is no itch or rash on the skin or any bad odour accompanying the dermatological problem.
Hairy nevus, where a person has patches of excess hair growth or hirsutism, is not uncommon. But hair persisting all over the body is very rare, said plastic surgeon Vinay Saoji.
"Though I have not come across such cases or its documentation anywhere, I suppose options like epilation could be tried out to rid the boy of the embarrassment," Saoji told IANS.
Prithviraj became an object of curiosity at a health detection camp here Sunday as he waited his turn in a long queue of people for a medical check up.
The visit to the health camp was just another effort on the part of Dilip Patil, Prithviraj's father, in his quest to diagnose and possibly find a cure for his Class 5 son.
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"The hair might automatically drop out when Prithviraj attains puberty or become hard in which case laser would be useful," Naik told IANS. "We will of course do a hormonal assay before deciding the course of action."
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When the father saw that the lanugo hair, as the condition is called in medical jargon, he took his son to a few skin specialists, endocrinologists, homeopaths and ayurvedic doctors. All told him that there was no quick-fire remedy for the rare disorder.
And the educated farmer never took recourse to anything unscientific - he never thought of going to a quack or a godman.
Hormonal studies and pathological tests conducted in nearby Pune and as far as in Germany and the US have fetched normal reports, according to the father .
Source-IANS
JAY/M
