VIDEO: Vaping-related illness ‘very real concern’

In this video, Paul Steinhauser, MD, captain of the U.S. Air Force and second-year internal medicine resident at San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Education Consortium, reviews a case report of vaping-induced lung injury.

The patient was a 39-year-old woman who presented to the University Hospital in San Antonio with a fever, shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. After a series of tests, the patient was diagnosed with exogenous lipoid pneumonia secondary to THC-containing e-cigarette use, according to Steinhauser.

“Given the fact that we had this very young individual — only 39 — and no prior medical history, there’s a very real concern for acute illness to occur [with vaping] rather than the typically slow destruction with cigarette use,” he told Healio Primary Care.

The case report was scheduled to be presented at the ACP Internal Medicine Meeting, which was canceled because of COVID-19. It is among the winners of ACP’s 2020 National Abstract Competition.