The head of Pulmonology at the Virgen de la Victoria Clinical Hospital in Málaga, José Luis Velasco, warns that lung damage from vaping will result in a specific illness in two or three decades. A study from the centre with 40 medical students confirms respiratory and ocular changes after just one session.
The head of the Pulmonology Service at the Virgen de la Victoria University Clinical Hospital in Málaga, Dr. José Luis Velasco, has warned that vaping will cause a specific respiratory illness within 20 or 30 years, when enough exposure time accumulates. This alert comes in the context of World Lung Day, which is celebrated this Friday, according to Diario Sur.
“What we are seeing now that we didn’t see 10 years ago are the respiratory symptoms associated with vaping, with electronic cigarettes,” Velasco specifies, insisting that tobacco remains the main risk to respiratory health, but expressing concern over the message that vaping is harmless. “The World Health Organization is clear that it is not harmless; we have data showing it causes lung damage,” he adds.
The Málaga specialist emphasizes that the disease associated with vaping will take time to manifest, just as it did with tobacco, and will mainly affect young people because the initiation is very early: “Kids are vaping at 13 or 14 years old, and that worries me.”
“We will see an association of a disease with vaping in 20 or 30 years, particularly in young people, because the initiation is very early right now.”
The available evidence points to functional respiratory alterations and symptoms. “Thinking that inhaling substances is harmless is not realistic. If you test these patients to measure how the pulmonary basal membrane is, you see that there are alterations,” he explains. Among the immediate consequences, he cites bronchial inflammation and bronchial hyperactivity: “The bronchi respond excessively to a stimulus that is not usual, but it is not clean air.”
Velasco uses COPD as an example, where 90% of patients have been smokers, to anticipate that something similar will happen with vaping. So far, he has treated admissions of patients with pneumonia or pulmonary edema without apparent explanation and with a history of vaping, although he cannot establish a direct relationship. In the smoking consultations at the Clinical Hospital, he also sees people who vape and want to quit, a challenge they address in a multidisciplinary manner, psychologically and pharmacologically. If the vaping is nicotine-based, the treatment is the same as for tobacco.
A study from the Pulmonology and Ophthalmology Services at the Clinical Hospital, published in March in the scientific journal Tobacco Prevention & Cessation, measured the effects of a single vaping session on 40 medical students. After 40-60 inhalations, FeNO, a marker of airway inflammation, decreased, and in those who smoked and vaped more, the resistance of the peripheral airways increased.
The session also reduced tear production in nearly half of the participants, indicating an acute alteration of the tear film, and produced changes in two parameters related to circulation and the structure of the macular area of the eye: the density of macular flow decreased and the thickness of the choroid in the lower area of the macula was reduced, interpreted as a possible transient retinal haemodynamic alteration.
The researchers themselves warn that there were only 40 participants, there was no control group, and the results cannot be extrapolated to repeated or chronic consumption. The observed effects are acute, and the study does not allow for determining whether they cause permanent damage, hence they call for longer-term research.
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