The dangers of smoking tobacco cigarettes is generally well-known. However, people are generally less familiar with the dangers of vaping/smoking E-cigarettes. One serious illness from vaping is a form of lung injury.
It is named E-cigarette or Vaping Product Use-Associated Lung Injury (EVALI). A study reported in Pediatric Pulmonology (December 2023) compared EVALI in teens (age 13-18) before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The usual symptoms of this form of lung damage were the same for the cases before and during the pandemic. During the pandemic, only one patient was positive for COVID-19; all other cases at a large teaching hospital were tested and were negative.
This suggests that the lung injury in the vast majority was due to vaping and not COVID-19. Also, during the pandemic, the affected teens were less likely to require a ventilator or to go home on oxygen upon discharge. This further supports the role of vaping as the essential cause of this new disease.
The primary symptoms of EVALI are pulmonary (cough, shortness of breath, and chest pain), gastrointestinal (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain), and whole body symptoms (fever, chills, and weight loss). Any teen who vapes and has at least some of these symptoms and appears ill, should be evaluated for EVALI.
Because these same symptoms can be due to COVID-19, the patients should also be tested for it. As noted, one teen had both EVALI and COVID-19.
In the summer of 2019 the CDC “began to investigate a steep rise in hospitalizations linked to the use of vaping products.” By February of 2020 the CDC recorded over 2800 hospitalizations and 68 deaths due to EVALI.
Awareness of this serious consequence of vaping will hopefully lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment. In the study mentioned above, treatment with steroids led to improvement in 79% of cases. The benefit included improved lung function.
Please make this information known to any young people in your life. It may prevent serious illness.
Peter M. Hartmann, MD
Family Medicine & Psychiatry
