NBC NEWS
A 22-year-old man received a double lung transplant earlier this month after being on life support for 70 days.
Jackson Allard, a North Dakota resident, went to the emergency room for a stomach ache in October, but was instead admitted to the hospital because his oxygen levels had dipped too low. The news was first reported by Valley News Live based on a GoFundMe page set up by Allard’s family friend.
Doctors in North Dakota diagnosed Allard with parainfluenza, a virus that can cause respiratory infections, which spiraled into pneumonia, then acute respiratory distress syndrome — a life-threatening injury caused by fluid build-up in the lungs.
“When they did X-rays, you couldn’t even see his heart. It was all white. So that means the whole lung was full of fluid,” said Doreen Hurlburt, Allard’s grandmother.
Hurlburt said Allard had used e-cigarettes since he was 16 or 17, but recently started vaping more heavily.
“He had no idea how bad it was for him,” she said. “The day before he was intubated, he said, ‘I had no idea I could get this sick.’”
Scientists still don’t fully understand the association between vaping and lung disease, so it’s unclear what role vaping may have played in Allard’s case. Some studies suggest that using e-cigarettescould make people more susceptible to respiratory tract infections.
Dr. Brian Keller, medical director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Lung Transplantation Program, said studies involving animals and human cells have shown that e-cigarette use can damage blood vessels and cells that line the lungs. But scientists are still trying to narrow in on which compounds in e-cigarettes are the worst for human health.
“There’s actually several that can cause damage,” Keller said. “This includes the nicotine itself, but also the burning of a carrier fluid like propylene glycol or glycerol, as well as the flavoring that a lot of people add to their vaping device.”
Hurlburt said her grandson’s doctors suspected that his use of e-cigarettes prevented him from recovering from his initial viral infection.
“As he was not getting better, they’re like, ‘Well, he vaped and vaping hurts your lungs,’” she said.
Allard’s mother, Jaime Foertsch, said her son was placed on a life-support device called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, then airlifted to M Health Fairview in Minnesota at the end of October.
Foertsch said Allard was the longest patient that M Health Fairview had ever kept on an ECMO machine, which adds oxygen to the blood and sends it back to the body. A hospital representative declined to comment on Monday, citing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which safeguards patient privacy…
