Man learns suspected lung tumour is actually toy witches hat he received 40 years ago

A British man thought he had lung cancer when the “tumour” turned out to be a toy he was playing with over 40 years ago.

Doctors were baffled when they pulled the toy - a small, plastic witches hat - from the man’s lung in what is being referred to as an “airway traffic jam”.

The tumour was actually a “plastic traffic cone masquerading as bronchial carcinoma", the BBC reports.

The tumour was a "long lost Playmobil traffic cone" that the man had received as a birthday present when he was seven years old.

The man thought to seek medical help when he had a strong and annoying cough for over a year.

Doctors believed the cough could have been because the man was a smoker but on closer inspection, a cone-shaped mass was spotted in his lungs via an X-ray.

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A report by the British Medical Journal on the medical case said: “The man's cough had almost gone and his symptoms had improved markedly” four months after the traffic cone was removed with a flexible bronchoscope.