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An emergency department doctor issued a warning to parents about a common grilling tool after seeing a four-year-old boy sustain a life-threatening injury from one.
The American physician, known as Dr. Beachgem onlineHe said to be careful with the BBQ brushes as the metal bristles can fall off and end up in the food.
She treated a young boy with severe ear pain and fever who stopped eating and drinking and it took 10 days of tests and scans before doctors discovered he had a brush wire lodged in his throat.
The boy was rushed into surgery and made a full recovery, but the doctor advised not to clean the grill with the brushes, as they can also cause intestinal obstructions and perforations if accidentally swallowed.
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An emergency room doctor known as Dr. Beachgem (pictured) warned against using barbecue brushes after seeing a sick child with the metal bristles lodged in his throat.
Dr. Beachgem, who is a pediatric emergency physician, called the 4-year-old’s case “the most interesting” she had had to date.
The boy was eating at a barbecue when he suddenly grabbed his ear crying and complaining of pain.
Wire bristles on grill brushes can cause serious digestive or throat injuries when swallowed.
They took him to the ER where he had a hearing test that seemed completely normal, so the parents were told to give him ibuprofen and to go to an otolaryngologist in a couple of days.
“A couple of days later I went and saw ENT, they did a full scan and again nothing, totally normal scan,” Dr. Beachgem said in the video.
The family was giving the boy ibuprofen and numbing ear drops before revisiting the ER because his pain was not subsiding.
After more than a week of tests and scans that came back normal, the boy was taken to the ER at 4:30 in the morning, where he saw Dr. Beachgem.
“Now he has some fevers and he doesn’t want to eat or drink and we have no idea what’s happening to him,” he said.
‘Her ear examination was completely normal and she still complained of ear pain. On examination of her throat, she had some swelling in the tonsil type or area on the right side and also some tenderness in her neck on the right side.
The doctor said they did “a bunch of labs” and every test they could think of before a CT scan revealed the problem.
“I had a metal wire about 2 cm that was lodged in the paratonsillar tissues on the right and had started to develop an abscess around it,” he said.
“He was eating a hamburger when this happened, so the grill brush, the wires from the grill brush, had become lodged in the hamburger and when he ate the hamburger it became lodged in the soft tissues.”
Dr. Beachgem explained that he would have felt pain in his ear because the wire and abscess were near the Eustachian tube, which connects the ear to the nasal cavity and the back of the throat.
The boy was taken to surgery where the wire was removed and his abscess was drained.
His pain ‘completely resolved’, he was prescribed antibiotics and made a full recovery.
After more than a week of tests and scans, a CT scan revealed the wire in the boy’s throat. He had accidentally eaten it when he got stuck in his burger that was being cooked on the grill.
“Do not use grill brushes with metal wires, there is not only a risk of getting stuck in the soft tissues of the throat, but they can also cause intestinal obstructions and perforations in the abdomen if accidentally swallowed,” the doctor warned.
They are mixed with the hamburger or the meat that is cooked on the grill.
Dr. Beachgem’s video quickly went viral with 17.3 million views and many in the comments were appreciative of the advice.
‘Ummm, who else gets up and is going to throw the grill brush? Thank you for this story,” said one viewer.
‘Wow! That’s crazy! Throwing my grill brush away,” wrote another.
Others had heard of the risk before and one said he had his own unpleasant experience with a bristle grill brush.
“He stuck a piece of metal wire from a grill brush into my tonsil, it was very painful,” they said.
‘I saw this on Mystery Diagnosis a long time ago and we have never used a grill brush since. Or a scrub, or you can buy a grilled pumice stone,” he suggested a second.