A study shows that over a 4-year period, 15 teenagers were injured from exploding e-cigarettes, according to surgeons who have treated young people at nine hospitals in the United States.
"It definitely was an injury we were seeing frequently," Shannon Acker, MD, an assistant professor of pediatric surgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and a pediatric surgeon at Children's Hospital Colorado, said in a statement.
Reporting in the Journal of Surgical Research, doctors detail injuries from e-cigarette explosions from January 2016 through December 2019. Ten teens were hospitalized, including three who were admitted to intensive care units.
"When we think about e-cigarettes, vaping, and the problems of marketing cigarettes to teenagers, it usually has to do with addiction and lung injury," said Acker, a co-author of the new study. "Whereas we, as trauma surgeons, were seeing these other traumatic injuries."
Six of the teens had facial burns, five of them lost multiple teeth, five had burns around the thighs and groin, four burned their hands, and four burned their eyes. One teen injured their radial nerve, which runs through the arm. Another cut their face, and one fractured their jaw.
Overall, six teens needed surgery, including one who needed multiple operations for a severe hand injury.
