‘Vaping nearly killed me’: British teenager

A British teenager, Ewan Fisher, nearly died after vaping caused a catastrophic reaction in his lungs.

A 16-year-old Ewan started vaping in 2017, in desperate attempts to quit smoking so he could improve at boxing.

In May that year, Ewan was facing difficulty breathing.

A night before his GCSE examinations, Ewan's mother took him to the emergency room because he was coughing and choking in his sleep.

His lungs were failing and he very quickly ended up on life-support in the intensive care unit of Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham.

Ewan told BBC News, "The e-cigarettes basically ruined me", urging other young people not to vape.

"I thought I was going to die," he added.

However, Ewan's condition was getting worse. The ventilation could not get enough oxygen into his body and his life was in the balance.

He was then taken to Leicester and attached to an artificial lung or ECMO (extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation) machine to keep him alive after his own lungs failed, rendering him unable to breathe on his own.

Large tubes were put inside Ewan that filtered out blood, removed carbon dioxide, added oxygen and pumped the blood back into his body.

"He had very serious respiratory failure, he had to go through ECMO and that is a very big deal," said Dr Jayesh Bhatt, a consultant at Nottingham University Hospitals.

How is Ewan now?

Ewan, now 19 years old, had a long recovery. 6 months passed before he was able to get up and stand on his feet again.

"I'm still not back to normal, I'd say I've had the most recovery during the last six months alone."

Ewan developed a condition called hypersensitivity pneumonitis - something he was breathing in was setting off his immune system, with catastrophic consequences.

"Vaping has basically ruined me, I try to tell everyone and they think I'm being stupid," Ewan added, urging everyone not to vape.

When scientists tested the two e-cigarette liquids Ewan had been using, they found one of them was triggering an immune reaction.

"They still do it, they all still vape, but they've seen what I've been through."

What do experts say?

Public Health England says vaping is 95 per cent safer than smoking, but is not without risks.

Rosanna O' Connor, the body's director of drugs, alcohol and tobacco, said, "Smoking kills half of lifelong smokers and accounts for almost 220 deaths in England every day.

The World Health Organization says e-cigarettes are harmful and should be subjected to regulation.

Dr Nick Hopkinson, medical director of the British Lung Foundation, said, "If people switch completely from smoking to vaping, they will substantially reduce their health risk as e-cigarettes do not contain tobacco and any harmful components are present at a much lower level."

The advice remains the same: if you smoke, switch to vaping; if you don't smoke, don't vape.