Since August this year, there have been numerous cases of hospitalization in the United States after smoking electronic cigarettes or electronic atomization products.
With the increase in the number of patients, this situation has attracted the attention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is listed as a public health issue that needs urgent attention.
Previously, this lung injury has been temporarily referred to as "electronic atomization product-related lung disease", and now it has a new name - EVALI (e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury),
That is, lung damage that occurs after smoking electronic cigarettes or other electronically atomized products.
The name was coined in the latest edition of the Clinician's Guide published by the CDC on October 18.
Number of lung injuries caused by e-cigarettes 丨 US CDC
Currently, there are 1299 cases of EVALI in 49 states in the United States and the US Virgin Islands. As the number of people suffering from this disease continues to grow, research on EVALI is rapidly evolving.
-New discovery:
EVALI patients who have been discharged from hospital are re-hospitalized in the short term -
Anne Schuchat, MD, deputy director of the CDC, said: "Unfortunately, more people are hospitalized each week due to lung injury." At the same time, CDC health officials also pointed out that the outbreak Another disturbing observation occurred in the case: some patients hospitalized for EVALI were admitted to hospital again within 5 to 55 days after discharge.
The reasons for the re-admission of EVALI patients are unclear, Schwart said, and the CDC survey believes that there may be three reasons for this:
1: EVALI causes the patient's lung function to weaken;
2: caused by steroid hormone drugs used in patients with EVALI for admission to hospital;
3: The patient again smokes e-cigarettes or electronically atomized products after discharge.
The CDC’s deputy director said: “I must stress again that smoking e-cigarettes or electronically atomized products can cause severe lung damage.”
-The condition is similar:
EVALI symptoms resemble respiratory virus infections -
In the newly released Clinician's Guide, the CDC recommends that doctors be vigilant when the flu and respiratory virus seasons come. The symptoms of lung disease and EVALI caused by flu or other respiratory viruses are highly similar, and patients may experience breathing. Rapid, sweating at night, in a hypoxic state and a patchy blur on the lung X-ray film.
Ram Koppaka, a health official at the National Center for Immunology and Respiratory Diseases, said: "Any person may have lung damage, which may be caused by a respiratory virus infection, or it may be an electronic cigarette or electronic fog. After the product is introduced, it may be caused by these two factors together."
-Lung injury after smoking electronic cigarette
May be due to tetrahydrocannabinol in the product -
Although health officials did not find the main cause of EVALI, they found that most patients had used electronic atomization products containing tetrahydrocannabinol, which is the main active substance in cannabis. Currently, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has collected and tested all electronic aerosolized products and equipment samples that may be associated with the disease.
FDA's acting commissioner Ned Sharpless said: "The cause of this outbreak may be more than that." CDH's deputy director Shuhart said the US National Center for Health Statistics is trying to treat patients with EVALI. The medical records were entered into the ICD-10 disease code.
ICD-10 is a system in which the World Health Organization categorizes diseases according to certain characteristics according to certain rules and uses coding methods. She believes that through this approach, health officials can more effectively track EVALI cases and clarify the cause of EVALI.
The cause of EVALI has not yet been found, and the incidence of lung disease due to smoking electronic cigarettes has become increasingly intense. Regardless of how harmless the manufacturers of e-cigarettes are to promote their products, think about it before you try.