Last week, Children’s Emergency Services took to TikTok to warn people not to use brushes made of wire mesh, adding that doing so could save lives. She talked about a recent incident involving a boy 4 years old who was taken to the emergency room where he works in the video, which is just over two minutes long.
The doctor explained the boy’s initial earache complaint, describing it as “one of my most interesting cases.” Naturally, a medical team examined the patient’s ears. The earache persisted despite the “completely normal” results of the exam and the absence of any abnormalities.
The ear, nose, and throat, the doctor instructed the family to administer ibuprofen to the young boy and to return in a few days. The young boy continues to have ear pain after two days. The family took their son to the ENT in accordance with the doctors’ orders, and yet again, his tests came back “totally normal.”
The boy did not respond to their home remedies, which included decongestant drops and ibuprofen. A CAT scan of the mastoid-the honeycomb shaped bony tissue behind or near the ear, was performed on the young boy two days later.
Again, everything appeared “totally normal,” but doctors were unable to determine the source of the ear pain or what was causing it. Again, they advised the family to visit an ENT and pediatrician within a few days if the pain persisted or got worse. He went back to the ER after two to three days because the pain persisted.
Right now, the ear infection had been happening for more than seven days with no help. He still had an earache when they arrived at the emergency room at 4:30 in the morning, but he also had a fever and lost his appetite. The doctor noticed tenderness in the neck area and swollen tonsils.
That’s why doctors decide to do a CAT scan of the entire neck and ears – along with all the other possible tests. A CAT scan later revealed a 2-centimeter metal wire “entangled in the right paratonsillar tissue”, causing an abscess around it. This caused pain and fever.
What connection does this have to grill brushes?
You might be curious about the connection between this and grill brushes. The boy, who was four years old at the time, was at home eating a grilled hamburger when he started complaining of ear pain. Before cooking the hamburgers, the parents cleaned the grill with a grill brush made of metal wires.
The hamburger that was placed on the grill took on metal wire fragments that had been left on the grill. The metal wire became entangled in the child’s soft tissues as the child was eating. The Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM) recommends against using metal wire brushes because of this.
He probably felt pressure and irritation from the Eustachian tube, which is the tube that connects the ear to the back of the throat. Because of this, he probably had pain in his ear. there the physician explained in his TikTok video, which quickly became a viral sensation.
The little boy was taken to the operating room, where an antibiotic was administered, the abscess was drained, and the metal wire was removed. The earache was suddenly gone! Doctors’ TikTok has received over 32 million views, 4.2 million likes, 55,000 comments, and 500,000 shares in the last five days.