Healthy beans

Time for us all to wake up and smell the coffee, writes Maurice Gueret, who wants some fellow doctors to turn down the volume control

Has beans

It was a marketing dream, if pure coincidence, that Grafton Street’s legendary Bewley’s Cafe reopened its doors just as scientists were extolling the health benefits of coffee. According to a major review of more than 200 previous studies, three cups a day is just what the doctor is ordering to reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke and some cancers of the skin, blood, prostate and womb. The lead author of the study is quoted as saying that a synergy between caffeine and antioxidants in roasted coffee beans may be key. I had a friend in medical school who turned his nose up at instant coffee, and insisted that his cuppa was made from beans that had to be ground up in front of him. This new review doesn’t cast any light on whether we should be buying beans instead of processed, gravy-like granules. My gut feeling is that buying and grinding those aromatic beans is better for you. Somebody needs to tell most Irish supermarkets — if they stock any coffee beans at all, they have the worst selection you’ll find anywhere in Europe. I’m hoping now that 2018 will be the year they also find health benefits in a jam-filled croissant. My days will all be off to the perfect start.

Dr Magill

I wrote recently about the strange case of a young Englishman who tried to kiss a Dover sole and ended up with the fish blocking his windpipe. You may recall that the fish was retrieved by paramedics using a long surgical implement called a Magill forceps. What I did not know at the time was that the guy who invented the forceps was a proud Ulster man. A retired medical professor in Queen’s University Belfast read my column, and wrote to tell me that Dr Ivan Whiteside Magill was born in Larne in 1888. He went to medical school in Queen’s, but never worked in Ireland. He served with the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War I, and went to England to work on soldiers who had facial and jaw injuries when it ended. Not only did he invent the Magill forceps, but he also developed endotracheal tubes and laryngoscopes, which allow anaesthetists to protect the airway and safely deliver gases to put you asleep. In 1960 he was knighted for his services to anaesthesia. Many Irish anaesthetists would have attended training courses given by Ivan Magill in London. Dr Magill died in 1986, just two years short of his century. His advances are still saving lives today, and his home town of Larne honoured his work by placing a plaque on the house in which he was born.

Loud ageism

A sprightly 70-year-old, very fit, with a pretty sound mind too, has been in touch about what she calls a terrible ageist culture in our hospitals. Worst offenders, she says, are the doctors, especially consultants. As she puts it so well, “They see 70 on your chart and say, hey — she’s deaf, so we have to shout!”. On her last visit to a Dublin hospital, she swears all her symptoms were heard in O’Connell Street. Now I won’t name the offending hospital (or doctor) — I’m sure all hospitals have them. But the consultant must have some roar. I measured the distance at almost four miles. The reader also commented on the general scruffiness of the ward, and not just its bathroom. She signs off by saying that matron and her carbolic soap are badly missed. Matron also wouldn’t be afraid to tell big, shouty medics to tone it down.

Retired syringe

New advice on ear wax has been issued to doctors by the UK’s National Institute for Health Care and Excellence, better known as NICE. The once-popular syringing is now out, and the treatment of choice for impacted wax is a few days of softening drops, followed by irrigation or suction. The problem with giant silver syringes is that it’s not easy to adjust pressure. I invested in a newfangled electric irrigator 25 years ago, where you could control the strength of water jets into the ear. It worked a treat, and to my knowledge, never knocked out an eardrum. A growing number of practitioners are now offering microsuction as well as irrigation. What’s interesting about it is that patients are now being charged per ear: €50 for one; €80 for two. In my heyday, there was a single price. A man queried this once, and I said the fee was for the cleaning of one ear, but my special deal was that another was cleaned for free. Shrewd businessman that he was, he once took his wife into the surgery, and they had one blocked ear done each!