Equipment required: A cheap e-Cigarette or Vape.
How to play: Put e-Cig or Vape in mouth, press button and breathe in.
Here are some pictures of the results of losing at Vape ‘Russian Roulette’
If you want to live longer by not smoking Cigarettes I’d say that blowing a hole in your face is a high price to pay – there might be less drastic ways available!
The photographs shown here are un-retouched – you can find them on the web. In these two cases, these two ‘Roulette Losers’ survived, but that is not always the case.
Vapers have died because their Vape or e-Cigarette has exploded in their mouth
If it happens to you, you won’t be thinking about your bad luck. You are likely to be in hospital, fighting to keep your face, or your ‘wedding furniture’, or perhaps your life. Let’s hope your luck holds.
This 3D X-ray is of the face of a 17 year old boy. “Hole ripped in gums, lost several teeth, shattered jaw, and sustained burns..” The Paediatric Surgeon said…. “the tissue got kinda vaporised”
Here are one or two, selected by me but all available for you to research yourselves. They are surveys of a few of many cases to illustrate the issues.
“Surgeons at Morriston Hospital’s Welsh Centre for Burns and Plastic Surgery said they had been treating numerous patients for burns after the batteries in their e-cigs exploded, The Sun reported. Victims of the most serious Vape pen explosions have required skin grafts and surgery in the most serious instances.
“Far from a “safer alternative” to Cigarettes, these devices are not regulated, and do not have to undergo safety testing before we put them in our mouths. We need to improve the safety of these devices through education and regulation—because although these explosions are rare, they can lead to lifelong consequences, disfigurement and even death.”
From Medical X-press
Western Pediatric Surgery Research Consortium
“…… finds cause for concern: the potential for the vaping devices to explode during use. Their study found that between Jan 2016 and Dec 2019, 15 patients at nine children’s hospitals sustained traumatic injuries from e-Cigarette explosions. Ten of those required hospital admission, three required intensive care units.
“An assistant professor of Pediatric surgery at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and a Pediatric surgeon at Children’s Hospital Colorado stated that, if the Li-ion Battery explodes, the pressure comes directly out. So if it’s in your hand or near your face, it will cause injury. There was at least one child in the study whose jaw was broken. It can also cause injuries to the eye and burn wounds to the hand—there was one child where it exploded in his hand and caused not only a burn to the skin, but also radial (forearm) nerve injury.
“Six out of the 15 children in the series required an operation. Three of those were skin grafts, one of them had a broken mandible (jaw) that required repair, and one child had a hand injury that had to be repaired. In another case, the device was much closer to the mouth when it exploded, so the patient broke several teeth and required both dental examination and airway examination in the operating room.
“A: Our goal in publishing this was to bring it to people’s attention that not only are these e-Cigarettes harmful because they’re addictive and because they can cause an associated lung injury (EVALI) which can be fatal, but they also can explode and cause a traumatic injury. We want to educate people and say, “These are the risks (Actually they are Hazards: Ed) that you face when you use e-Cigarettes.” We laid out in the paper what the next steps should be, including efforts to decrease e-Cigarette use, improving safety of the devices, and educating clinicians about the risk of device explosion.”
…… A total of 32 explosions of e-Cigarettes to 32 patients that caused 105 recorded injuries to the facial region.
| Projectile injuries | 77 | 75% of all facial injuries |
| Burn injuries | 28 | |
| Projectile & burn | 14 | |
| Burn injuries mostly involved | ||
| the face | 18 | |
| oral cavity | 7 | |
| eye | 7 | |
| Bone or tooth fracture | 20 | 60% |
| Surgery required in | 20 | 60% of patients, which included internal fixing of fractures, tooth extraction, bone and skin grafts, and eye surgery. |
| 40% Had complications after treatment |
https://doi.org/10.1016
https://www.sciencedirect.com
Thermal and chemical burns caused by e-Cigarette battery explosions
2020, Annales de Chirurgie Plastique Esthetique
Citation Excerpt :
…… Several localizations of burns have been described: thighs and legs, external genitalia, hands, face, corneosclera (eyes), cervical spine (neck), teeth, palate (roof of the mouth), and brain. The following have also been described: extensive dilacerations (tearing apart), smoke inhalation injuries, acid/(alkali) battery fluid burns, post-traumatic stress conditions (insomnia, flashbacks, depression, post-traumatic stress).
What happens if you put Vapes or e-Cigarettes in your POCKET…?
In the Next Blog Post, we will examine some of the circumstances and try to find ways to minimise the occasions that vapes explode in a pocket – maybe we can suggest ways to minimise the damage that a vape can cause.
Let’s have a quick look at the Medical consequences of a Vape going off in your pocket…
Once again, the comments here are taken from just one of many Reviews of many Medical cases to give you an idea of what can go wrong.
Thermal burns without flames due to overheating
Blast lesions from the explosion
Chemical alkali burns caused by the electrolyte solution
It makes for a difficult, or at least uncommon, First Response Management problem. A Lithium-ion Battery explosion is likely to spray Electrolyte on the victim…. The Electrolyte is Alkali – like Household Bleach is an alkali – (not like Vinegar which is an Acid). The alkali will be caustic and may make the wound worse. The essential immediate First Aid for a deep burn is to drench with cool water to cool the wound and prevent further deep burning, but water may tend to spread the Alkali Electrolyte and may increase the size of the Chemical burn …. increasing the damage and the pain.
Going back to the ‘Review of Vape Injuries’ …
Thirty-one reports were included in the review and described 164 cases. Most patients (90%) were male and between 20 to 29 years old. In the majority of cases (65%), e-Cigarettes exploded in pockets, compared to exploding in the face or hand. Common burned areas included the thigh, hand, genitals, and face. Burn severity was typically second-degree burns (35%).
