A teenager who got a hole in her lung after vaping the equivalent of 400 cigarettes a week is warning other young people it’s “not worth it”.
Kyla Blight, 17, who started vaping when she was just 15, believed the habit was “harmless” and she could vaporize 4,000 puffs a week, a device that should last three weeks and contains the nicotine equivalent of 400 cigarettes.
The teenager from Egremont, Cumbria, was rushed to hospital by her father Mark Blight, 61, in the early hours of May 11 after receiving a phone call informing him that she had collapsed and turned “blue” while I was sleeping at a friend’s house.
Kyla underwent a five-hour surgery to remove part of her lung after her heart almost stopped beating.
Doctors discovered a small air blister, known as a pulmonary blister, that had developed on the top of Kyla’s lungs. It is believed that her excessive vaping caused it to flare up, causing her lung to collapse.
Kyla told Good Morning Britain that vaping is “not worth it” after her five-hour life-saving surgery
After her surgery, Kyla had to spend two more weeks in the hospital before she could return home.
She now says the ordeal has put her off disposable vapes for the rest of her life.
Just three weeks after life-saving surgery, he is urging other young people to throw away vapes.
‘I don’t think they should do it themselves, it’s really not worth it. “It’s fun and people think it’s cool, but it’s not worth it at all,” Kyla said on Good Morning Britain.
The teenager revealed on GMB that although she was under 18 and could not legally buy vapes in a store, she would buy them from other people.
He admitted to vaping “everywhere” he went and said he reached for his vaporizer first thing in the morning.
Kyla Blight, 17, has vowed never to touch vapes again after her ordeal.
Kyla Blight suffered a collapsed lung after vaping the equivalent of 400 cigarettes
Blight said the first sign that something was wrong with his daughter’s health was in November 2023, when Kyla was rushed to the hospital after he believed she was having a heart attack.
However, an x-ray revealed that he had a hole in his lung after a blister formed.
The student was taken to the hospital again in February, but this time she was told she had been cured.
But he ended up in hospital again in May after the blister burst and caused his lung to collapse.
Blight revealed that although he once caught his daughter using an e-cigarette, he had not realized that she had started vaping at age 15, or to what extent she was doing so.
Blight, a full-time caregiver, took to Facebook last week to raise awareness about his daughter’s life-threatening experience, urging young people to throw away their e-cigarettes.
An air blister known as a pulmonary blister developed in Kyla’s lung which then burst and caused the lung to collapse.
Kyla’s father Mark warns parents about the dangers of disposable vapes after watching his teenage daughter nearly die from the side effects.
The father-of-nine said: “I have been to hell and back with Kyla for the past few weeks. I just attributed it to vaping, they can’t attribute it to anything other than vaping that caused this.
“I was at a friend’s house and I received a phone call at 4 in the morning informing me that she had fainted and turned blue. I went to look for her. We took her to the hospital.
‘His lung collapsed this time because of the hole. They put a drain on him. She is a girl who doesn’t like needles. She screamed. She almost went into cardiac arrest.
“We were rushed to Newcastle and had surgery on Tuesday. It was a five and a half hour operation. He had had a seizure on the operating table.
‘I was talking to the surgeon and he told me about these blisters that can form in the lungs. They believe that it is the disposable vaporizers that burst these blisters and puncture the lungs.
‘Apparently it’s a big thing now. He has done many operations like this.
‘It was terrifying for me. I cried like a baby. It was horrible to see. I’ve been with her all the time.
‘It really threatened his life because he came very close to going into cardiac arrest that Friday. They said she turned blue. They thought she was gone.
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Blight admitted that he vaped for almost 13 years because it helped him quit smoking. The former heavy smoker has now also stopped vaping after his daughter’s health scare.
Dr. Hillary warned non-smokers not to start vaping. She told GMB: ‘For Mark, who had been a smoker, it was better to vape.
‘For Kyla it’s the last thing she needed, children who don’t smoke shouldn’t vape.
‘They contain toxins, many of which have been identified, some of which are quite unpleasant.
‘Nicotine is addictive. No, they don’t give you carbon monoxide or tar, but they give you a lot of other things.
“4,000 inhalations a week is a lot of fluid entering the lungs and we still don’t know what the long-term risks are.”
Kyla said her recent experience has “terrified” her and opened her eyes to the dangers of using e-cigarettes that she now “won’t touch.”
‘When I was 15 it started to become popular. All my friends were doing it. I just thought it would be harmless and I’d be fine,” he said.
‘Every day I used the 4,000 puffs and finished 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 feel like everyone has the same opinion.
But now I won’t touch them. I wouldn’t go near them. The situation has really scared me a lot.
‘I was terrified. We went in there thinking we were only going to be there for a few hours, but we ended up there for two weeks with surgeries and everything.’
Kyla ended up smoking the nicotine equivalent of 400 cigarettes a week.
Kyla said disposable vapes became popular among her friends at school and “everyone” thought they were safe.
Kyla believed vaporizers were harmless when she started using them at age 15.
E-cigarettes allow people to inhale nicotine in the form of vapor, which is produced by heating a liquid that typically contains propylene glycol, glycerin, flavorings 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 generally considered safer than smoking, the long-term effects of vaping remain a mystery.
Doctors have expressed fears that there could be a wave of lung disease, dental problems and even cancer in the coming decades in people who adopted the habit at a young age.
Last year, leading pediatricians also warned that children were being hospitalized with vaping-induced breathing difficulties amid a “disturbing” youth vaping epidemic.
Everything you need to know about electronic cigarettes
How much nicotine is in an electronic cigarette?
There are many different brands of e-cigarettes that contain different levels of nicotine.
The legal amount of nicotine in an e-liquid capacity in the UK is 20 mg/ml, which is equivalent to between 600 and 800 puffs.
The Elf Bar 600, one of Britain’s most popular vaporizers, is advertised with nicotine strengths of 0 mg, 10 mg and 20 mg.
How many cigarettes are “in” an electronic cigarette?
According to analysts, Elf Bar 600 contains the equivalent of 48 cigarettes.
It takes 600 puffs before you have to throw it away, which means that, in theory, every 12.5 puffs is equivalent to one cigarette.
Experts say that for many e-cigarettes, 100 puffs are equivalent to ten regular cigarettes.
Elf Bars is a brand of e-cigarettes that are often sold in stylish colors and with kid-friendly names and flavors, like Blue Razz Lemonade and Green Gummy Bear.
Is vaping better for your health than cigarettes?
According to the NHS, vaping products are considered better than cigarettes as users are exposed to fewer toxins and at lower levels.
The health service adds that vaping instead of smoking cigarettes reduces exposure to toxins that can cause cancer, lung diseases, and heart and circulation diseases, such as strokes and heart attacks.
Public Health England, which no longer exists, published an independent expert review in 2015 that concluded that e-cigarettes are around 95 percent less harmful than cigarettes.
However, vaping is not risk-free, as although the levels in tobacco products are much higher, e-cigarettes still contain harmful toxins, according to a study by researchers at 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 the mouth and reduces saliva, which causes irritation due to a buildup of bacteria and food that cannot be removed.
Almost 350 vaping hospitalizations were recorded in England in 2022, which are thought to be mainly due to respiratory problems such as difficulty breathing, chest pain, lung inflammation and, in severe cases, respiratory failure.
