UK – Teenager warns against e-Cigarettes after nearly dying from respiratory failure
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A teenager who nearly died from vaping has urged others not to take up e-cigarettes, even as a way to quit smoking. Doctors also issued a warning about vaping after a British teenager nearly died from “catastrophic” respiratory failure linked to e-cigarettes.
SkyNews reports Ewan Fisher, who turned 19 today, was treated for the condition at Nottingham University Hospitals’ NHS Trust and ended up on life support.
Ewan Fisher was connected to an artificial lung to keep him alive after his own lungs failed and he could not breathe.
Ewan told BBC News e-cigarettes had “basically ruined me” and urged other young people not to vape. His doctors say vaping is “not safe”, although health bodies in the UK say it is 95% safer than tobacco.
The teenager was under age when he bought vaping equipment from a local shop. He had been using the device for four to five months before he was taken ill aged 16. Mr Fisher was treated for hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP) – a type of allergic reaction to something breathed in which results in inflammation of the lung tissue.
The reports says that the teenager became so ill that he was put on a type of life support – extra corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) – which is an exterior artificial lung that puts oxygen into the blood and pumps it around the body. Doctors, writing in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, said the “previously well young person presented with a catastrophic respiratory illness” which put his life in danger.
