A teenager had his jaw blown off by an electronic cigarette. More frequent cases.
It all started when Kailani Burton bought a vaping kit for her teenage son Austin, hoping he would use it to quit smoking. In March last year, she and her husband were sitting quietly in the living room when they heard a loud noise. Austin then came running in, his jaw bloodied. An electronic cigarette had exploded in his mouth.
A piece of jaw was missing
“He was bleeding a lot,” says Ms Burton in an interview. “It looked like he had a hole in his chin.” The family rushes to the hospital in Ely, Nevada, but ultimately makes their way to a trauma center. “I was so worried while driving. I almost hit a wild horse,” the mom continues.
Austin tells doctors he saw a big flash, then felt a terrible pain in his lower jaw, whereupon he removed the device from his mouth. He suffered from a major fracture of the lower jaw, of which a piece of two centimeters was missing. Several teeth had also jumped.
A public health problem
Austin used a VGOD product, which sells a whole range of vaping devices: Mango Bomb, Berry Bomb and Apple Bomb. It is the overheating of the device that would have caused the battery to explode. In the United States, 2,035 cases of e-cigarette explosions and vaping-related burns were recorded in 2017.
“I had no idea these devices could explode and cause serious injury,” says Dr. Russell, director of the trauma center at Primary Children’s Hospital (Salt Lake City), who treated Austin. “But the thing is, they can burn. They can explode in your pocket. They can explode in your face. I think there’s a public health issue there,” he said.
The electronic cigarette is now validated by many studies as one of the most effective ways to quit smoking tobacco. However, it also promotes, according to recent research, heart disease, wheezing, fungus in the mouth, the transition to smoking in adolescents, lung cancer and heart attacks.
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