An English mother-of-six has been cured of cancer after coughing up a tumour growing from her throat in October.

Claire Osborn, 37, revealed that she expelled a 2-centimetre lump during a fit of coughing in October last year. When she showed the tissue to her doctor, a biopsy was done on it confirming after a week that it was metastatic adenocarcinoma, an aggressive throat and mouth cancer.

Based on the findings, the doctor told Osborn the following month that the cancer gives her a 50 percent chance of living. But upon her medical examination, no trace of the cancer was found in her body.

'I was totally flabbergasted. I couldn't believe a coughing fit had saved my life. If I hadn't coughed it up, the tumour would have grown and almost certainly spread to my other organs,' the Coventry mother told the Daily Mail.

Initially, Osborn and her family were devastated when doctors at University Hospital Coventry told her the result of the tumour biopsy test.

"They said the cancer was inoperable and I should be prepared for chemotherapy and radiation therapy. I just thought I was going to die. The mortality rate for this cancer is quite high, about 50 per cent, so I started saving for my funeral," Osborn said, according to Daily Mail.

A PET and CT scan done on her body and head both turned out negative for any trace of cancer prompting Head and Neck surgeon Gary Walton to say: "This patient basically coughed up her cancerous tumour. It is very uncommon to cough up cancer, but she did it."

Walton explained that the tumour may have grown on a stalk at the back of her mouth that made it easy to expel when coughing. He said the stalk snapped during coughing detaching the tumour.

After the PET and CT scans, doctors removed the remaining cancerous cells from the back of Osborn's mouth to complete her treatment.

Adenocarcinomas can arise in many tissues of the body, including glands cells. Metastatic adenocarcinoma means the cancerous cells have spread to other tissues.

Aside from the throat and mouth, adenocarcinoma affects the colon, lung, prostate, urachus, vagina, breast, esophagus, pancreas, liver and stomach.

Prone to the disease are people 50 years old and above. According to eHow.com, the most common sites of this condition are the lungs or breast for women and prostate or lungs for men.

The most common treatment method for adenocarcinoma is radiation therapy. For the pain associated with the condition, pain relievers are prescribed by doctors to patients.