A teenager has been left with the lungs of an 80-year-old lifelong smoker after vaping for just six months in an attempt to give up cigarettes.
Ewan Fisher, 19, from Nottingham, spent weeks in intensive care after his lungs failed the night before he was due to start his GCSE exams.
Aged 16, he needed an artificial lung to survive and spent 10 weeks in hospital as doctors fought to save his life.
He is believed to have suffered an exaggerated immune response to chemicals found in e-cigarette fluid. Despite eventually recovering enough to go home, the ordeal has left him with the lungs of someone more than four times his age.
Ewan Fisher, 19, from Nottingham, has been left with the lungs of an 80-year-old lifelong smoker after vaping for just six months in an attempt to give up cigarettes. Pictured left before he started vaping before and right now
Ewan spent weeks in intensive care (pictured) after his lungs failed the night before he was due to start his GCSE exams
Doctors have blamed the issue on his vaping – something the aspiring heavyweight boxer took up to help him stop smoking so he could improve his fitness with the ambition of turning professional.
But that is now a distant dream for the 19-year-old, who gets out of breath walking up stairs and admits his 65-year-old grandfather, who has smoked for 40 years, if fitter than him.
He has also put on five stone since going into hospital and suffers with mental health issues.
Ewan told FEMAIL: ‘They tried telling me that I’d make a full recovery, but it’s nearly four years on and I still really struggle.
An aspiring heavyweight boxer, Ewan took up vaping to help him stop smoking so he could improve his fitness with the ambition of turning professional. Pictured as a younger teenager before his ordeal
The then 16-year-old needed an artificial lung to survive and spent 10 weeks in hospital as doctors fought to save his life
‘They said my lungs would make a full recovery within two years but it’s been a lot longer and I wouldn’t even say they’re at 60 per cent.
‘I used to be really healthy. I used to run every night and I can’t do anything anymore. When it’s hot it messes with my lungs. I’m on steroids to help them cope.
‘I can’t run, I really struggle up hills. It’s ruined all my joints. My life’s changed massively.
‘My granddad is fitter than me and he’s 65. When I was in hospital they said I had the lungs of an 80-year-old life-long smoker and I’d only vaped for five or six months.’
Ewan, pictured in hospital, explained: ‘They said my lungs would make a full recovery within two years but it’s been a lot longer and I wouldn’t even say they’re at 60 per cent’
Ewan hit the headlines last December when horrifying pictures of him in intensive care surfaced.
Despite being under age, he said ‘it was easy’ to buy either cigarettes or e-cigarettes in his home city in 2017, and he used to smoke half a pack a day.
In May that year, Ewan was finding it harder and harder to breathe. When his lungs began failing he quickly ended up on life-support in intensive care in Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham.
He was taken to Leicester and attached to an artificial lung or ECMO (extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation) machine.
Since leaving hospital Ewan has just finished a Level 3 BTEC in business and finance and is hoping to train as an accountant. He also travels around the country talking to school kids about the dangers of vaping
Ewan developed a condition called hypersensitivity pneumonitis – something he was breathing in was setting off his immune system, with catastrophic consequences.
WHAT IS HYPERSENSITIVITY PNEUMONITIS?
Hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP) happens if your lungs develop an immune response – hypersensitivity – to something you breathe in which results in inflammation of the lung tissue – pneumonitis.
It sees the air sacs and airways in the lungs become severely inflamed.
The condition is triggered by an allergic reaction to inhaled dust, fungus, moulds or chemicals.
It’s exact prevalence is unknown, but experts estimate it plagues 1 per cent of farmers. This is why it has earned the nickname farmer’s lung.
This is caused by breathing in mould that grows on hay, straw and grain.
Many other substances can cause similar disease patterns. In many cases it can be very difficult to find the exact cause.
The symptoms include cough, shortness of breath and sometimes fever and joint pains.
You may need to take anti-inflammatory medication called steroids for a few weeks or months.
If you need steroids to control the condition for longer, your doctor may recommend more drugs to reduce the risk of side effects associated with steroids.
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Since leaving hospital Ewan has just finished a Level 3 BTEC in business and finance and is hoping to train as an accountant.
He also travels around the country talking to school kids about the dangers of vaping.
But despite what happened to him, he says that many people still see vaping as a safe alternative to smoking.
He also believes that the sweet flavours ‘entice’ kids to them and make them highly addictive.
He said: ‘The flavours are really addictive. When I went into the hospital they took my vape and I was vaping blue flush (blackberry flavour) and I had a rhubarb and custard one too.
‘It’s that sort of stuff that got me addicted. Those sweet flavours are addictive and they entice young people.
‘If you can get sweet flavorus like Coca-Cola, it attracts young people. Every flavour is out there – even cookies and cream.’
He also believes that the high strength vapes sold in America – which contain two and a half times more nicotine than EU rules stipulate – would cause ‘mayhem’ in the UK.
He said: ‘I wasn’t even vaping the high nicotine stuff – I was 6mg of nicotine. I tried the higher ones and it was making me choke.
‘I was about 16 and I’d just started vaping and I took a hit of my mates ones and I was choking for ages.
‘If those high-strength vapes came over here it would cause mayhem.’
This view is backed by vape expert Jim Kang, who runs American firm vaporsolo.com.
He said: ‘The US’ high-strength vapes have been blamed on our public health crisis among high school kids.
‘It’s obvious that firms are targeting kids with these sweet flavours and the UK government should do everything in its power to stop it having the same issues that we’ve sadly had to deal with in the States.’
Vaping is just as bad for your heart as smoking cigarettes as researchers warn e-cigarettes are NOT safer than tobacco
Vaping could put you at the same risk of getting heart disease as smoking cigarettes, research suggests.
Public Health England claims e-cigarettes are ’95 per cent safer than traditional tobacco’ and encourages smokers to make the switch.
But researchers have found the devices may trigger changes in cholesterol linked to killer heart disease, similar to cigarettes.
Vaping also stifled the heart’s ability to pump blood around the body just as much, if not more, than traditional forms of tobacco.
Research has shown smoking cigarettes increases heart rate, tightens major arteries and can cause an irregular heart rhythm – all of which make your heart work harder.
The killer habit also raises blood pressure, which increases the risk of a stroke and a heart attack.
Scientists are unsure why e-cigarettes cause similar changes in heart health, even though they contain fewer harmful chemicals than standard cigarettes.
British health bosses say they are ‘as certain as ever’ that vaping is less harmful than smoking despite 34 Americans dying to mystery lung diseases linked to the devices
E-cigarettes allow users to inhale nicotine in vapour form, rather than breathing in smoke from cigarettes which burn tobacco and produce tar.
But scientists are now advising users wean off e-cigarettes because of the ‘lack of information on long-term safety’ and a ‘growing body of data on their negative effects’.
Researchers from Boston University analysed 476 participants aged between 21 and 45 with no previous heart issues.
Of them, 94 were non-smokers, 45 e-cigarette users, 52 people who used both e-cigarettes and traditional tobacco and 285 cigarette smokers.
The team found that bad cholesterol, known as LDL, was higher in sole e-cigarette users compared to non-smokers.
When you have more LDL than your body needs, it can cause plaque to build up in your arteries. This thick, hard plaque can clog your arteries like a blocked pipe.
Reduced blood flow can lead to a stroke or heart attack. If a clot completely blocks an artery feeding your heart, you can have a heart attack.
Lead author Sana Majid said: ‘Although primary care providers and patients may think that the use of e-cigarettes by cigarette smokers makes heart health sense, our study shows e-cigarette use is also related to differences in cholesterol levels.
‘The best option is to use FDA-approved methods to aid in smoking cessation, along with behavioural counselling.’
However, the team’s research did not look at whether vape users had previously smoked cigarettes.
The high cholesterol levels therefore may have been caused by damage done by previous traditional tobacco use.
A separate study, by the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, found vaping was worse for heart blood flow than cigarettes.
Researchers analysed 19 young adult smokers – aged between 24 and 32 – immediately before and after vaping or smoking a cigarette.
They examined the heart’s function using an ultrasound while participants were at rest and after performing a handgrip exercise to simulate physiologic stress.
In smokers who use traditional cigarettes, blood flow increased modestly after inhalation and then decreased with subsequent stress.
However, in smokers who used e-cigarettes, blood flow decreased after both inhalation at rest and after handgrip stress.
Lead author Florian Rader, medical director of the Human Physiology Laboratory at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said: ‘These results indicate that e-cig use is associated with persistent coronary vascular dysfunction at rest, even in the absence of physiologic stress.’
Co-author Susan Cheng, director of public health research, also at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, added: ‘We were surprised by our observation of the heart’s blood flow being reduced at rest, even in the absence of stress, following inhalation from the e-cigarette.
However, British health bosses have said they are ‘as certain as ever’ that vaping is less harmful than smoking.
Public Health England’s Professor John Newton said he was adamant that e-cigarettes were ‘far less harmful than smoking’.
PHE claims vaping is 95 per cent better than smoking and still encourages traditional smokers to make the switch.
It says vape contains fewer harmful chemicals than standard cigarettes, which burn tobacco and produce tar. E-cigarettes allow users to inhale nicotine in vapour rather than breathing in smoke.
Counterfeit or bootleg e-cigarettes that officials believe have been tinkered with to contain THC have become the prime suspects behind the US deaths.
But Professor Newton, director of health improvement at PHE, reiterated it had not changed its advice on nicotine containing e-cigarettes.
‘Smokers should consider switching completely and vapers should stop smoking,’ he said.
‘We are as certain as ever that e-cigarettes are far less harmful than smoking, which kills almost 220 people in England every day.
‘Our concern is that the responses we have seen to the problem in the US and in other countries may increase the already widespread misunderstanding about the relative safety of nicotine e-cigarettes, deterring smokers from switching and risk driving vapers who have switched back to smoking.’
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