Doctors at the government medical college in Kerala`s Kannur have removed a tiny whistle from the respiratory system of a 40-year-old woman who had accidentally swallowed it in her teenage and was bothered by a racking cough for over two decades.

According to doctors, the woman hailing from Mattannur in Kannur district was referred to the government medical college on Tuesday by a private clinic pulmonologist who suspected the presence of foreign body in her airways that lead from the trachea into the lungs.