Doctors are warning about the dangers of vaping during pregnancy after a Texas woman nearly lost her baby and died following a fatal reaction to the device.
The 28-year-old, who was otherwise healthy, was forced to have an emergency C-section at 36 weeks after suffering severe hemorrhaging in her lungs.
The internal bleed is thought to have been caused by repeated damage to the blood vessels that carry oxygenated blood to and from the heart.
Long-term and regular use of vapes exposes the lungs to a cocktail of chemicals and volatile compounds that can wreak havoc on our cells.
Regular vaping can spell disaster in pregnant women, carrying myriad risks from lung scarring and other pulmonary injuries to asthma and cardiovascular damage
The woman was severely oxygen deficient and had a rapid heartbeat. When antibiotics failed to work and her condition got worse, doctors had to perform an emergency cesarean section in order to save her unborn baby’s life.
Doctors at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Amarillo, Texas, detailed the tale in a case study published in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences.
They wrote: ‘There has been very limited published literature on the adverse effects of electronic cigarettes despite their introduction in 2007.
‘The use of vaping has overtaken the standard electronic cigarettes in our current time and it has been a challenge to understand the health risks that they have due to the rapidly changing designs and lack of long-term follow-up.’
The pregnant patient’s husband confirmed she had been vaping ‘regularly’ during her pregnancy and had shortness of breath, though he did not say for how long.
It is the latest case to highlight the dangers of vaping, which is now being linked to heart problems and cancers associated with normal cigarettes.
Vaping and using other smokeless tobacco products during pregnancy can have disastrous consequences even after the baby is born.
Researchers in Sweden recently determined that pregnant women who used snus, a type of smokeless tobacco, increased the risk of their baby dying before its first birthday by 70 percent.
E-cigarettes are laden with mysterious chemicals and volatile organic compounds that coat the lungs in harmful chemicals, causing irritation and potentially irreversible damage.
Vaping also carries many other health risks from lung scarring and other pulmonary injuries to asthma and cardiovascular damage.
Nicotine in e-cigs has been found to directly injure a baby in utero by causing abnormal lung, heart, brain, and immune system development, which carries lifelong consequences.
The pregnant woman, who remained nameless in the case report, appeared at the hospital in Texas complaining of shortness of breath. The doctors did not disclose how long she had been experiencing her symptoms.
It is unclear whether her doctors knew right away that she was an avid vape user or if they only found out about that from her husband later on.
Doctors determined that her heart rate was abnormally high at about 110 to 120 beats per minute. She was hypoxemic, meaning oxygen levels in her blood were lower than normal.
Indeed, her oxygen saturation, that is, the amount of oxygen you have circulating in your blood – was between 80 and 86 percent on room air.
A normal oxygen saturation level for a pregnant woman her age, though, hovers around 95 percent.
Her condition worsened and eventually she needed an emergency C-section.
After the procedure, there was blood in the patient’s urine. She was also coughing up blood, which convinced doctors to perform a bronchoscopy, a procedure that gives doctors a look at the lungs and air passages.
It was then that they discovered she had a diffuse alveolar hemorrhage (DAH).
A DAH is a type of hemorrhage characterized by bleeding into the small air spaces in the lungs where carbon dioxide leaves the blood and oxygen enters it. This type of hemorrhage can sometimes be linked to an autoimmune disease such as small-vessel vasculitis and systemic lupus erythematosus.
But tests to determine whether the woman was contending with an autoimmune disorder turned up nothing suspicious.
And her prothrombin time, that is, the time it takes for a clot to form in a blood sample, was within normal limits.
It was then that they consulted with her husband who told the doctors that she was a regular vaper. Their conclusion then was that the patient was having ‘vaping-induced platelet dysfunction’ and strongly advised her to quit.
They wrote: ‘Given that our patient had a negative autoimmune workup, normal platelets, and a normal coagulation profile we are hypothesizing a direct correlation between platelet dysfunction and vaping.
‘Although our patient may have had a direct inhalational injury from vaping that led to her DAH, it does not completely explain why she was also having hematuria. There were no complications during her cesarean section nor did the patient have abdominal or uterine bleeding that would suggest otherwise.’
Despite claims by e-cigarette makers and firms that lobby for their special interests that the devices are a safer alternative to smoking, doctors urge pregnant women to cease all nicotine use entirely.