Doctors find Playmobil toys in their lungs after about 40 years

Hard to believe, but true: In the UK, doctors discovered a Playmobil traffic cone in a man's lungs during an operation. The patient accidentally inhaled the part 40 years earlier and has caused tissue changes over the years. The doctors had taken the basis of the X-ray of a tumor.

X-ray shows tissue changes
Physicians often experience curious things in their everyday lives. So in the case of a 47-year-old man from the UK. As the journal British Medical Journal (BMJ) reports, the long-term smoker had gone into treatment for his chronic cough and had a huge surprise there. Because instead of a suspected tumor, the doctors found in the lungs of the man a small Playmobil toy.

Doctors have operated a plastic hat from Playmobil out of the lungs of a man from the UK. (Image: psdesign1 / fotolia.com)

Toy was a seventh birthday present
The patient had previously suffered from a persistent cough for about a year. The X-rays showed changes in the lung tissue, so that the doctors in the smoker from lung cancer. When the Preston man was operated on in a special clinic, everyone involved was amazed: Instead of the suspected tumor, a small traffic cone from Playmobil had caused the tissue changes.

According to the report, the man remembered that he had got the toy for his seventh birthday and that he had not found it again at some point. According to his stories, he had played a lot with Playmobil as a child and sometimes swallowed a part of it. Apparently without obvious consequences, because until the occurrence of coughing, the man had lived for decades without complaints.

Complaints go back to surgery
Like the doctors around Dr. Writing to Nicholas Denny of Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester, they know of no other case in which a foreign body in the lungs remained undetected for so long. Since the patient was only seven years old when the plastic part entered his body, the respiratory tract appeared to have been able to adapt to it, the authors said. Four months after the removal of the toy, the cough was almost gone, and among other things, the altered tissue had regressed.

In case of persistent complaints alert the rescue service
Experts repeatedly warn of how dangerous it can be when children are small parts such. Ingest or inhale coins, peanuts, buttons or plastic particles. In the free brochure "Risk of poisoning in children", the BfR gives tips on what measures should be taken in the event of swallowed or inhaled foreign bodies.

Accordingly, if persistent cough or respiratory problems immediately the 112 emergency call off, even if a sewing needle was swallowed, the child must be brought immediately to the children's hospital. In "more benign" cases, or if the child does not show abnormalities, it is important that the parents control the bowel movement to see if the foreign body is eliminated. If this has not happened after one week, the pediatrician should be consulted. (Nr)