Health News

Suspected Tumor Turns Out To Be A Playmobil Traffic Cone

Children swallow anything and everything if adults don’t keep a close eye on them, usually resulting in a trip to the emergency room. A man in the United Kingdom who is well into adulthood found out the hard way that this behavior can have consequences much, much later in life.

The man, who had a chronic cough, turned out to have an unusual item lodged in his lung – a toy traffic cone he had accidentally inhaled as a child, 40 years ago.

The unnamed 47-year-old patient from Preston had been having a persistent cough for over a year, and was referred to a respiratory clinic, Gizmodo reports. Doctors suspected that the patient, who was a long-term smoker, had a tumor when scans showed a mass in his lung.

But when they performed the surgery to remove the mass, they discovered that the object was a “long lost Playmobil traffic cone” that the patient had received on his seventh birthday. The toy was fished out using a flexible bronchoscope. The patient, a handyman, told doctors that he “regularly played with and even aspirated (inhaled) the toy pieces during his childhood.”

He reported feeling no ill effects in the decades since, until the cough that forced him to seek medical aid. The medical report said that since the patient was so young when he inhaled the toy, his airway may have been able to adapt and remodel itself to the foreign object.

While it’s not unusual for children to swallow or inhale small toys, this “case in which the onset of symptoms occurs so long after initial aspiration is unheard of.”

In the four months since the tiny traffic cone was removed, the patient’s cough has almost completely gone and his symptoms have improved considerably. There was no mention if the traffic cone was part of a set.

The report was published in the British Medical Journal.

Click to comment
To Top

Hi - We Would Love To Keep In Touch

If you liked this article then please consider joing our mailing list to receive the latest news, updates and opportunities from our team.

We don't want an impostor using your email address so please look for an email from us and click the link to confirm your email address.