Results: 17-Year-Old Needs Double Lung Transplant After Vaping

A 17-year-old boy whose lungs were irreversibly damaged by vaping received a double-lung transplant at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, a lifesaving measure taken when a patient's own lungs are diseased or damaged beyond repair and there is no other hope of survival, doctors said on Tuesday. Without the transplant, performed last month, the patient "would have faced certain death," Dr. Hassan Nemeh, who led the surgical team, said during a news conference at the hospital. Have you ever heard of someone as young as 17 needing a lung transplant?

The patient's lungs were scarred, stiffened, pocked with dead spots and extremely inflamed, he said. On a CT scan before the surgery, the patient's chest appeared almost empty, as if the lungs had vanished. Normal lungs look dark on imaging because they are full of air; the patient's lungs were not visible because they were not working. There was no air. "What I saw in his lungs is like nothing I've seen before, and I've been doing lung transplants for 20 years," Dr. Nemeh said. He added, "This is an evil I haven't faced before." Did you know that vaping could result in such serious medical conditions as needing a lung transplant (or two)?

Due to the serious health effects, do you think vaping should be banned?

The patient is recovering well and is up and about now, but still in the hospital. His name is being withheld to protect his privacy, but he and his family wanted to release information about his case in the hope that it might persuade others to quit vaping or never start, hospital officials said. If you know someone who is vaping, will you try to encourage them to stop?

A doctor at the briefing read a statement from the family, which said, in part: "We asked Henry Ford doctors to share that the horrific life-threatening effects of vaping are very real! Our family could never have imagined being at the center of the largest adolescent public health crisis to face our country in decades. "Within a very short period of time, our lives have been forever changed. He has gone from the typical life of a perfectly healthy 16-year-old athlete — attending high school, hanging out with friends, sailing and playing video games — to waking up intubated and with two new lungs, facing a long and painful recovery process as he struggles to regain his strength and mobility, which has been severely impacted." Did you know vaping can be such a serious health risk – even for athletes?

The doctors declined to say what products the patient had been vaping, how long he had been doing it or how often. About 86 percent of the patients with lung injuries in this outbreak had vaped THC, the chemical in marijuana that makes people high. The case is the first transplant reported in the nationwide outbreak of vaping-related lung injuries, and it highlights the severity of an illness that, as of Nov. 5, had sickened 2,051 people and killed 40. Did you know vaping was causing such a serious health concern this rapidly?