An accurate diagnosis normally requires the doctor examining the patient and maybe tissue samples. An Irish doctor, however, has done it while watching television by spotting that a government minister had a tumour in his cheek.
The unnamed surgeon from University Hospital, Galway, was at home with his doctor wife before Christmas. They were following a current affairs programme on RTÉ in which Conor Lenihan, the Overseas Aid minister, was being interviewed.
“If you look very carefully,” the surgeon reportedly told his wife, “his face moves when he talks but the lump doesn’t.”
The next day he called the minister’s office and left a message. Lenihan (43) phoned back and the surgeon told him about his fears, advising him to see a head and neck specialist at a Dublin hospital immediately.
Doctors at the Mater hospital carried out tests and quickly found a tumour on his salivary glands. It was removed during an operation last month and found not to be malignant. If it had been left untreated it could have damaged the nerves in his face.
Lenihan told the Irish Independent newspaper: “I’m a very lucky man. The consultant wouldn’t have seen the left side of my face but for the fact that I was sitting at the left of the group in the television studio.
“The very last thing I wanted was an operation in the run-up to the general election but I will always be grateful to that consultant who took the trouble to call after he saw me on television.”
Lenihan, a father of three, has since given up smoking.
“I decided to go public,” he later added, “because I think there is a tendency among men when something like that happens to ignore it or almost wish it away or something.” – Guardian Unlimited Â