Warning to pregnant vapers: Healthy woman suffers from pulmonary hemorrhage and requires emergency c-section

Doctors are warning of the dangers of vaping during pregnancy after a Texas woman nearly lost her baby and died from a fatal reaction to the device.

The 28-year-old, who was otherwise healthy, had to have an emergency C-section at 36 weeks after suffering severe bleeding from the lungs.

The internal bleeding is thought to have been caused by repeated damage to the blood vessels that carry oxygen-rich blood to and from the heart.

Long-term and regular use of vapes exposes the lungs to a cocktail of chemicals and volatile compounds that can wreak havoc on our cells.

Regular vaping can be catastrophic for pregnant women, as it carries myriad risks from lung scarring and other lung injuries to asthma and cardiovascular damage

The woman was severely starved of oxygen and had a rapid heartbeat. When antibiotics didn’t work and her condition worsened, doctors had to perform an emergency C-section to save the life of her unborn child.

Doctors at Texas Tech University’s Health Sciences Center in Amarillo, Texas, detailed the story in a case study published in the American Journal of the Medical Sciences.

They wrote: “Despite their introduction in 2007, there has been very limited literature published on the adverse effects of electronic cigarettes.

“Vaping use has overtaken standard electronic cigarettes in our modern day and it has been challenging to understand the health risks they pose due to rapidly changing designs and lack of long-term tracking.”

The pregnant patient’s husband confirmed that she had been vaping “regularly” during her pregnancy and suffered from shortness of breath, although he did not say for how long.

It’s the latest case that highlights the dangers of vaping, which is now being linked to heart problems and cancer linked to regular cigarettes.

Vaping and using other smokeless tobacco products while pregnant can have disastrous consequences even after the baby is born.

Researchers in Sweden recently found that pregnant women who used snus, a type of smokeless tobacco, increased the risk of their baby dying before their first birthday by 70 percent.

E-cigarettes are loaded with mysterious chemicals and volatile organic compounds that coat the lungs with harmful chemicals, causing irritation and potentially irreversible damage.

Vaping also poses many other health risks, from lung scarring and other lung injuries to asthma and cardiovascular damage.

Nicotine in e-cigarettes has been found to directly harm a baby in the womb by causing abnormal development of the lungs, heart, brain and immune system, with lifelong consequences.

The pregnant woman, who was not named in the case report, arrived at the Texas hospital complaining of shortness of breath. Doctors did not disclose how long she had had her symptoms.

It’s unclear if her doctors knew right away that she was an avid vaper, or if they only found out later from her husband.

Doctors found that her heart rate was abnormally high at around 110 to 120 beats per minute. She was hypoxemic, meaning the oxygen levels in her blood were lower than normal.

In fact, their oxygen saturation, which is the amount of oxygen circulating in your blood, was between 80 and 86 percent with room air.

However, normal oxygen saturation for a pregnant woman her age is around 95 percent.

Her condition worsened and eventually she required an emergency c-section.

After the procedure, there was blood in the patient’s urine. She was also coughing up blood, which convinced doctors to do a bronchoscopy, a procedure that allows doctors to look at the lungs and airways.

It was then that they discovered that she had diffuse alveolar hemorrhage (DAH).

DAH is a type of hemorrhage characterized by bleeding into the small air spaces in the lungs where carbon dioxide leaves the blood and oxygen enters. This type of bleeding can sometimes be associated with an autoimmune disease such as small vessel vasculitis and systemic lupus erythematosus.

But tests to determine if the woman was struggling with an autoimmune disease turned up nothing suspicious.

And her prothrombin time, the time it takes for a clot to form in a blood sample, was within normal limits.

At the time, they consulted with her husband, who told doctors she was a regular vaper. She then concluded that the patient had “vaping-induced platelet dysfunction” and urged her to stop.

They wrote: “Because our patient had a negative autoimmune test, normal platelets and a normal coagulation profile, we suggest a direct correlation between platelet dysfunction and vaping.

“Although our patient may have had a direct inhalation injury from vaping that led to her DAH, this does not fully explain why she also had hematuria. There were no complications during her caesarean section, nor did the patient have any abdominal or uterine bleeding to suggest otherwise.’

Despite claims from e-cigarette makers and special interest companies that the devices are a safer alternative to smoking, doctors are urging pregnant women to stop all nicotine use altogether.

Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk