An emergency department doctor has issued a warning to parents about a common barbecue tool after she saw a four-year-old boy suffer a life-threatening injury caused by one.
The American doctor, known as Dr Beachgem online, said to be wary of barbecue brushes as the metal bristles can fall off and end up in your food.
She treated a young child with severe ear pain and a fever who stopped eating and drinking and it took 10 days of tests and scans before doctors discovered he had a wire from the brush lodged in this throat.
The boy was rushed to surgery and fully recovered but the doctor advised against cleaning your grill with the brushes as they can also cause bowel obstructions and perforations if accidentally swallowed.
An emergency room doctor known as Dr Beachgem (pictured) has warned against using barbecue brushes after she saw a child unwell with the metal bristles lodged in his throat
Dr Beachgem, who is a paediatric emergency medicine physician, said the case with the four-year-old was ‘the most interesting’ one she’s had to date.
The child was eating at a barbecue when he suddenly grabbed his ear crying and complaining of pain.
Wire bristles from barbecue grill brushes can cause serious throat or digestive injuries when ingested
He was brought to the emergency room where he had an ear test that looked completely normal so the parents were told to give him ibuprofen and go to an ear, nose and throat specialist in a couple of days.
‘A couple of days later went and saw ENT, they did a full exam and again there’s nothing, totally normal exam,’ Dr Beachgem said in the video.
The family was giving the child ibuprofen and numbing drops in his ears before they visited the emergency room again because his pain was not subsiding.
After more than week of tests and scans that came back normal, the boy was taken at to emergency room at 4:30 in the morning where he saw Dr Beachgem.
‘Now he’s having some fevers and he’s not wanting to eat and drink and we have no idea what’s going on with him,’ she said.
‘His ear exam was totally normal and he was still complaining of ear pain. On the throat exam he did have a little bit of swelling in the kind of tonsil or area on the right side and a little bit of tenderness on the neck on the right side also.’
The doctor said they did ‘a ton of labs’ and every test they could think of before a CAT scan revealed the problem.
‘He had about a 2cm metal wire that was lodged in the paratonsillar tissues on the right and it had started to develop an abscess around it,’ she said.
‘He had been eating a hamburger when this happened so the grill brush, the metal wires on the grill brush, had become lodged in the hamburger and when he ate the hamburger it got lodged in the soft tissues.
Dr Beachgem explained he would have been feeling pain in his ear as the wire and the abscess was near the Eustachian tube, which connects the ear to the nasal cavity and the back of the throat.
The child was taken to surgery where the wire was removed and his abscess was drained.
His pain has ‘completely resolved’, he was put on antibiotics and he made a full recovery.
After over a week of tests and scans, a CAT scan revealed the wire in the boy’s throat. He had accidentally eaten it when it got stuck in his burger that was cooked on the grill
‘Do not use grill brushes with metal wires, there’s not only the risk that it can get lodged in the soft tissue in your throat but they can also cause bowel obstructions and perforations in the abdomen if accidentally swallowed,’ the doctor warned.
‘They get mixed in the hamburger or the meat that’s being cooked on the grill.’
Dr Beachgem’s video quickly went viral with 17.3million views and many in the comments were thankful for the advice.
‘Ummmm who else is getting up and going to throw away their grill brush? Thank you for this story,’ one viewer said.
‘Wow! That’s crazy! I’m throwing my grill brush away,’ another wrote.
Others had heard of the risk before and one said they had their own nasty experience with a grill brush bristle.
‘I got a piece of metal wire from a grill brush stuck in my tonsil, it was so painful,’ they said.
‘I saw this on Mystery Diagnosis a long time ago and we’ve never used a grill brush since. Either a scrubby, or you can buy a grilled pumice,’ a second suggested.
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