Teen Is Left With Severe Injuries After His Vape Pen Exploded In His Mouth

Korin Miller
Updated
Photo credit: The New England Journal Medicine/Getty Images
Photo credit: The New England Journal Medicine/Getty Images

From Delish

  • A 17-year-old teen is left with severe injuries after his vape pen exploded in his mouth.

  • The New England Journal of Medicine published a case report about the incident and reported that the teen had a crack in his jawbone, in addition to extensive lacerations in the mouth and several missing teeth.

  • We asked experts to weigh in on the dangers of vaping and explain why injuries from vape pens have become increasingly common.

A Nevada teenager was left with serious facial injuries that looked like a gunshot wound after his vape pen exploded in his mouth. The 17-year-old’s injuries were so severe that they ended up in a case report recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

According to NEJM's report, the boy came to an emergency room with pain and swelling in his jaw two hours after his vape pen exploded while he was using it. He had “extensive lacerations” in his mouth and lost several teeth. X-rays later revealed that he also had a crack in his jawbone.

The teen, whose name is Austin, suffered from injuries that looked “kind of like a close-range gunshot wound,” Jonathan Skirko, MD, a pediatric ear, nose and throat surgeon who operated on the boy, told The Washington Post.

Austin’s mother, Kailani Burton, told The Post that she bought him the vape pen to help him quit smoking, but she had heard about e-cigarettes exploding and was worried. “I told him, ‘You’ve got to be careful, these things have happened,’ ” Burton said. “They get hot.”

Austin ended up needing two surgeries to repair the damage, and had titanium plates placed in his jaw to stabilize the bone. Austin is now 18 and his mom says he’s “doing really good.” Still, she says it could have been worse. “I could’ve lost him,” she said.

Injuries from vape pens are increasingly common

But Austin's case isn't the first of its kind. There were about 2,035 explosions and burn injuries caused by e-cigarettes between 2015 and 2017, according to a recent report published in BMJ Tobacco Control-and researchers say that number is probably an underestimate.

Doctors expect that more vaping injuries will follow. “We’re just starting to see the beginning of this,” says Osita Onugha, MD, a thoracic surgeon and director of thoracic surgery research and the Surgical Innovation Lab at John Wayne Cancer Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California.

David Gatz, MD, an emergency medicine physician at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore, agrees. “We've seen a surprising number of injuries and burns related to explosions from these devices,” he says.

The injuries from vaping pen explosions can be serious and even deadly

If a vaping pen explodes in your pocket, you may have a “relatively minor” burn to your thigh, Dr. Gatz says. “But an explosion near the face and neck can result in serious injury, and even a jaw fracture,” he says.

The fact that vaping pens are used in your mouth is concerning, Dr. Onugha says. “That’s a very sensitive area, and an explosion there is not a minor event,” he says.

At least two people have died from e-cigarette explosions. Earlier this year, a Texas man suffered a fatal stroke and died after his vape pen exploded. A man in Florida was killed last year after he was hit by shrapnel when his vape pen blew up.

"The no. 1 thing with vape pens is that people need to understand is that they're not very well-regulated, safe devices," says Mark Conroy, MD, medical director for emergency medicine at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. "You get a lot of new products coming out that might not have the same quality control as others. The risk for explosions is certainly a real risk."

Overall, doctors don’t recommend taking up vaping

There are a “variety of chemicals” used when you vape and “when you put those chemical into your lungs, it’s not a good thing,” Dr. Onugha says. There is no proven link between vaping and cancer (although vaping is still a relatively new habit), but “we know this can cause interstitial lung disease,” Dr. Onugha says. “That makes it hard to take a deep breath, and really impairs the function of the lung.”

Vaping also can expose users to higher concentrations of nicotine than cigarettes and can even be a gateway to illicit drug use in teens, Dr. Onugha says.

Doctors admit that there’s still a lot they don’t know about vaping, but what they’ve seen so far isn’t great. “The explosive popularity e-cigarettes has largely left the medical community playing catch-up,” says Dr. Gatz. “We are still learning about all the potential dangers.”

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