Teenage vaping addict, 17, who smoked equivalent of 400 cigarettes a week loses part of her lung and almost suffers a heart attack after collapsing and 'turning blue'

Oct 26, 2024

By Chris Pollard 10:34 11 Jun 2024, updated 15:37 11 Jun 2024

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A 'terrified' dad is warning parents about the life-threatening dangers of vaping after his teenage daughter burst a hole in her lung, with her habit equivalent to smoking 400 cigarettes a week.

Mark Blight rushed Kyla Blight to hospital during the early hours of May 11 after receiving a phone call that she had collapsed and turned 'blue' while sleeping over at a friend's house.

After her heart nearly stopped beating, the 17-year-old underwent surgery for five and a half hours to remove part of her lung.

Medics discovered a small air blister, known as a pulmonary bleb, had developed on the top of Kyla's lungs. It is thought her excessive vaping caused this to burst, leading to her lung collapsing.

Kyla, who began vaping at just 15, believed the habit to be 'harmless' and would get through an entire 4,000 puff vape a week, which is the nicotine equivalent of 400 cigarettes.

After her surgery, Kyla had to spend a two further weeks in hospital before she could return home.

She now says the ordeal has frightened her off disposable vapes for the rest of her life.

Mr Blight, a full-time carer, took to Facebook to spread awareness of his daughter's life-threatening experience, urging young people to throw away their vapes because 'it's not worth it'.

The father-of-nine , who lives in Egremont, Cumbria, said: 'I've been to hell and back with Kyla over the last couple of weeks. I just put it down to vaping, they can't put it down to anything else but vaping that's caused this.

'She was at a friend's house and I got a phone call at 4am that she had collapsed and gone blue. I went round for her. We took her down to the hospital.

'Her lung collapsed this time due to the hole. They put a drain in her. She's a little girl who doesn't like needles. She screamed. She was close to having a cardiac arrest.

'They rushed us into Newcastle and she had the operation on Tuesday. It was a five and a half hour operation. She'd had a seizure on the operating table.

'I was talking to the surgeon and he was saying about these blebs that can form on the lungs. They think it is the throw-away vapes that burst these blebs and puncture a hole in your lungs.

'Apparently it's a big thing now. He's done a lot of operations like this.

'It was terrifying for me. I cried like a baby. It was horrible to watch. I've been with her the whole time.

'It really did threaten her life because she was so close to having a cardiac arrest on that Friday. They said she went blue. They thought she'd gone.'

Mr Blight said the first sign something was untoward with his daughter's health was in November 2023 when Kyla was rushed to hospital after he believed she was having a heart attack.

However, an X-ray revealed she had a hole in her lung after a bleb had formed.

The student was taken to hospital again in February but on this occasion, she was told it had been healed.

But she ended up in hospital again in May after the bleb burst and caused her lung to collapse.

Mr Blight revealed that despite once catching his daughter using an e-cigarette, he hadn't realised she had started vaping at age 15 not the extent she was doing it.

The 61-year-old admitted he has vaped himself for 13 years to help quit using cigarettes. However, he now urges young people to stop using disposable vapes after seeing the dangers first-hand.

'People underestimate how dangerous they can be. I used them to stop smoking 13 years ago and it's never bothered me at all. Although you think it doesn't bother you, it might do later on after what happened to Kyla. It's scared me,' he said.

'For kids there should definitely be a ban, especially the throw-away ones. These chemicals that they've got in them haven't been tested properly. Until the government does tests on it, people are going to do it.

'The doctor said he sees a lot more of it now than he used to. He did say there are a lot of young ones with holes in their lungs.

'I would say to parents, watching your kid do this, you're going to go through what I went through. It's just not worth it.

'For kids, they don't understand until it happens to them. That's why I wrote on my Facebook. I'm going to have to make young kids aware of this.'

Kyla admitted she began using disposable vapes aged 15 after seeing her friends at school doing it.

This graduated to her using it everyday and culminated in her getting through 4,000 puffs a week all the while thinking it was 'harmless'.

However, she said her recent experience has 'terrified' her and opened her eyes to the dangers of using e-cigarettes which she now 'won't touch'.

'When I was 15 it started becoming a popular thing. All my friends were doing it. I just thought it would be harmless and that I would be fine,' she said.

'Everyday I would use the 4,000 puff ones and I would go through them in about a week.

'I honestly thought they were harmless and wouldn't do anything to anyone, even though I had seen so many things about it. I just feel like everyone has that same view.

'But now I won't touch them. I wouldn't go near them. The situation has really scared me out of them.

'I was terrified. We went in there thinking we were only going to be in there for a few hours but ended up being there for two weeks having surgeries and all this.'

Earlier this year, a shocking study suggested that vaping can trigger cell changes which may go onto cause cancer.

Figures show that one in five children has tried vaping despite it being illegal for under-18s, while the number of children using vapes has tripled in the past three years.

E-cigs allow people to inhale nicotine in a vapour — which is produced by heating a liquid, which typically contains propylene glycol, glycerine, flavourings, and other chemicals.

Unlike traditional cigarettes, they do not contain tobacco, nor do they produce tar or carbon — two of the most dangerous elements.

Although widely viewed as safer than smoking, the long-term effects of vaping still remain a mystery.

Doctors have expressed fear there could be a wave of lung disease, dental issues and even cancer in the coming decades in people who took up the habit at a young age.

Last year leading paediatricians also warned children were being hospitalised with vaping-induced breathing difficulties amid a 'disturbing' youth vaping epidemic.

How much nicotine is in an e-cigarette?

There are many different brands of e-cigarettes, containing various different nicotine levels.

The legal amount of nicotine in an e-liquid capacity in the UK is 20mg/ml equating to between 600 and 800 puffs.

The Elf Bar 600, one of Britain's most popular vapes, is advertised as coming in nicotine strengths of 0mg, 10mg and 20mg.

How many cigarettes are 'in' an e-cigarette?

The Elf Bar 600 contains the equivalent to 48 cigarettes, analysts say.

It delivers 600 puffs before it needs to be thrown away, meaning, in theory, every 12.5 puffs equate to one cigarette.

Experts say for many e-cigarettes, 100 puffs equate to ten normal cigarettes.

Is vaping better for your health than cigarettes?

Vaping products are considered to be better than cigarettes as users are exposed to fewer toxins and at lower levels, according to the NHS.

The health service adds that vaping instead of smoking cigarettes reduces your exposure to toxins that can cause cancer, lung disease and diseases of the heart and circulation, such as strokes and heart attacks.

Public Health England, which is now defunct, published an expert independent review in 2015 concluding that e-cigarettes are around 95 per cent less harmful than cigarettes.

However vaping is not risk-free, as while levels in tobacco-products are much higher, e-cigarettes still contain harmful toxins, according to a study by researchers from the Medical University of Silesia in Poland.

And Dr Onkar Mudhar, a London dentist who posts videos on TikTok, said Elf bars can cause gum inflammation, swelling and bleeding.

He said this is because nicotine dries out your mouth and reduces saliva, causing irritation from a build-up of bacteria and food that can't get washed away.

Nearly 350 hospitalisations due to vaping were logged in England in 2022, which are thought to be mainly down to respiratory problems, such as shortness of breath, chest pain, lung inflammation and, in severe cases, respiratory failure.

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