Transcription:

Melanie Cole (Host):  As cigarette smoking seems to be on the decline, another method of nicotine use has managed to hook today’s youth. But the dangers we’re hearing about, are terrifying for parents. My guest is Dr. Darrin Privett. He’s an Emergency Room physician with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Dr. Privett, always a pleasure to have you on. What a great guest you are. Tell us a little bit about vaping. What is it? And do we even know what’s in these e-liquids?

Darrin Privett, MD (Guest):  I’m really excited to be here today and to talk about this really important topic especially for parents out there and for our youth so that they can understand the dangers associated with vaping. Basically, the end product is that these devices are trying to heat up a liquid solution to a temperature that is high enough so then they can produce that liquid into an aerosol and then it is inhaled.

Most of these liquids contain different chemicals, flavors, but primarily, the main source is for them to deliver nicotine. And that’s the concern is that you are producing an aerosol, a vapor, a mist and that it’s inhaled into the lungs and it’s brought into the lungs and then through the rest of the body.

Host:  We’re hearing more and more in the media Dr. Privett, about hospitalizations, and even deaths of our kids. Do we know what’s causing this sudden spike in lung illnesses and deaths related to vape and E-cigarette products? You are an Emergency Room physician; have you seen this and what do we know about it?

Dr. Privett:  It definitely is a hot topic right now. We’ve seen a lot of cases throughout the country where a lot of the patients have gone into the emergency room and been admitted to the hospital because of severe lung and pulmonary complications that they’ve been able to link back to E-cigarettes and to vaping. Usually, like any other upper respiratory complaint, just like a smoker can have pulmonary complaints and then pulmonary complications; the same is true with these E-cigarettes or vaping. Sometimes, they can induce upper respiratory like symptoms that can cause you to become short of breath, you can develop chest pain and then those symptoms can even progress and worsen and you can develop bronchitis, pneumonia, chronic lung disease.

What I’ve seen in the emergency room obviously, we’ve – it’s interesting like asthmatics or people who have chronic lung disease; the majority of those populations use E-cigarettes and vape or smoke and makes their underlying chronic lung disease worse. So, we’ve definitely seen people who have pulmonary complaints. We haven’t had a large patient population where I live that has had the complications like we’ve seen back east and in Wisconsin and Minnesota. But I did have a patient that did come in that had severe shortness of breath and their chest x-ray – this is a young woman who was in her late 30s who came in with severe shortness of breath, almost like she was in respiratory failure. And her x-ray had severe pulmonary edema, just fluid in the lungs, that looked just like someone who had – an 80 year old who had heart failure. We ended up having to put a tube down her throat and put her on a ventilator to help breath for her.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to get off the ventilator and she ended up getting a tracheostomy and so just from vaping, using e-cigarettes, whatever the underlying derivative was that caused her to develop this non-cardiogenic pulmonary edema, non-cardiogenic heart failure that caused her to develop this lung disease is unknown. The main reason is that you can’t really regulate all the different chemicals that are in these electrical – or E-cigarettes, these different electrical nicotine delivery systems. So, we don’t know really what the underlying factor is, because they contain – these liquids contain a sort of multiple different types of chemicals.

Host:  Well, it really is scary, and you think of people that have lung disease from smoking cigarettes, it’s from years and years, but what we are seeing that makes it so much more scary is that it’s a quick turnaround. A kid could be vaping just for a few months and have some things happen. For parents, Dr. Privett, do you have some ways that we can talk to our children about vaping or is there a way to tell if they are doing it? Because you know, you can smell if they’re smoking but this you can’t always smell.

Dr. Privett:  Most of them have a kind of a flavorful smell to it. So, as parents are out there and all of the sudden you smell that your son’s backpack has a fruity smell to it; it’s not because he has an air freshener in his backpack or he is all of the sudden now aware that he is having different odors and he reached that age, the testosterone is flowing and he’s got special colognes that he wears; more than likely, it’s because he is smoking these E-cigarettes or using vapes because they do have a bunch of flavory smells to it.

And ironically enough, most of the kids when you talk to them, they’ll tell you that the reason why they do it is because they like to smell. They like the taste of this fruity flavor. And certainly the people that are producing these E-cigarettes know that that’s a way to trap to hook these young kids in. But the reality is, is that they contain nicotine. There’s a lot of mislabeling out there. There’s a lot of products that say that their particular products don’t have nicotine in them. But the reality is, is that they do, and nicotine is a drug. And when you are thinking about the effects of drugs on our teenagers; just like marijuana, the brain does not mature until around the age of 26 and nicotine can be a very potent drug especially to the developing brain and it can affect it and change it. And as you mentioned, it certainly can increase their ability to become addicted to it which will increase their risk of using cigarettes in their adult life. And that’s the main concern.

And so parents need to be vigilant. They need to be nosey in every aspect of their kids’ lives and it’s debatable whether you should be a helicopter parent or not. But you should just be aware and be concerned and know what’s going on in your kid’s life. Be around them. If they are tying to avoid you, being in their room, closing the door; just make sure that you are present and be aware of smells around their kids and if you smell something; make sure you use that as an opportunity to talk to them and to try to determine if they actually are using these products.

Host:  Wow, that’s really great advice and as a nosey helicopter parent, and anyone that knows me, knows that I am all up in my kids grill when it comes to those kinds of things. This is really great advice for parents to hear. So, Dr. Privett, as we wrap up, again, you are an emergency room physician and you are hearing about this, you are seeing it firsthand; what do you want parents to know about the dangers of vaping and the fact that these are marketed and sold to youth specifically and that it could get them hooked on cigarettes later on? What do you want them to know about the dangers?

Dr. Privett:  Well, we know for sure that this is an epidemic and in 2011, around 2% of high school students and 0.5% of middle school students were using these E-cigarette products. In 2017, 12% of high school students are now using it and almost 4% of middle school students are using these products. So, the use has gone dramatically up in the younger population and the problem is, is that these e-cigarettes are almost like a gateway drug to nicotine products which can funnel then as a gateway drug to marijuana. And a lot of kids are using this to use marijuana as well. And the scary thing is that when they vape marijuana, it doesn’t have a smell to it. So, you don’t know.

And so, the main message is that we do know that almost 50% of youth who have ongoing discussions with their parents about the dangers of drugs, the dangers of nicotine use, the dangers of smoking; are less likely to use drugs than those that don’t have those conversations. And so, you need to have those hard tough discussions with your children and make sure that they are aware of the dangers of these products and that they are aware of the dangers of drugs because we know that the number one preventable risk factor for almost all diseases is smoking. And so if you want to have a direct effect in your child’s health, and their future health; talk to them about the dangers of vaping. Talk to them about the dangers of drugs because if we can stop our youth from using E-cigarettes, from using vaping and to inhibit them from using these nicotine products; they are less likely going to smoke when they get older and therefore less likely to develop severe chronic diseases such as cardiac disease and lung disease just through simple education.

Host:  Great information as so well put Dr. Privett. Such a pleasure as always. Just love to have you on as a guest and thank you for really great information. So important for parents and for our teens to hear. So, parents, play this podcast for your teens because they need to hear from a physician like this about these dangers and we can all work together so that we get these things out of their lives. That wraps up another episode of It’s Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Head on over to our website at www.henrymayo.com for more information and to get connected with one of our providers. As I just said, if you found this podcast as informative as I did; share it. Share it with your teens, share it with your friends. Share it on social media. That way we all learn from the experts at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital together. And be sure not to miss all the other interesting podcasts in our library. Until next time, I’m Melanie Cole.