The doctor found why a 14-year-old boy from Vilnius coughed: modern “spring allergies” – not always allergies

The most recent case in Vilnius – a fourteen-year-old boy was brought in by ambulance after smoking electronic cigarettes, even though he was examined by doctors for allergies in the morning. And there are many such cases. Doctors are afraid that sometimes parents buy electronic cigarettes for children, not suspecting that they fill them with various liquids, sometimes even with rat poison.

More about this in TV3 news.

Agnė Jagelavičienė, a pediatric allergist at the Vilnius City Clinical Hospital, recently examined a fourteen-year-old boy who was brought in by his mother for a cough, thinking that her son had an allergy, but her tests did not show it. The doctor did not give up.

“I wanted to pick up the patient’s card, see what the results of his examination were, and on the same day, it turns out, the teenager was brought by ambulance to the hospital due to poisoning from smoking an electronic cigarette. And then the thought stuck in my head, I didn’t ask if that child, a teenager, in a specific case – fourteen years old, doesn’t smoke something, doesn’t use drugs”, says A. Jegelavičienė.

May cause serious lung damage

According to the doctor, when the fourteen-year-old passed out from an electronic cigarette in a shopping mall, his mother called an ambulance. The doctor remembers another similar case – a twelve-year-old girl was constantly coughing, but there was no allergy. However, the doctor pointed out that she was behaving strangely, giggling for no reason. Now the doctor already has advice for her colleagues.

“As a doctor, you should listen. In such a case, the child says: “I don’t mind.” I’m fine.” Because when there is an allergy, usually those children, teenagers are adults, they suffer, they complain, they are not well,” the allergist assures.

Doctors point out that teenagers who have smoked e-cigarettes constantly cough, runny nose, and have headaches.

“They are foreign to our body, which it recognizes and tries to remove with the help of coughing and phlegm. Instead, it occurs either from a dry cough to a wet cough and even such very, very serious diseases, serious lung damage,” says Agnė Jegelavičienė.

And the teenagers themselves do not hide that they feel bad after smoking electronic cigarettes with unclear liquids.

“It is and has been many times. Dizziness, nausea, vomiting, thirst also very much. This nausea happens after a day or two, and it takes a long time before it goes away,” shares a fifteen-year-old smoker.

Such ailments cannot be hidden from teachers.

“Then they call the parents, then they find out who was here, what happened. And they usually take him to the hospital,” says the teenager.

It is important to pay attention to the cough

Parents should be alarmed if the child sneezes for a long time, has a runny nose, tears, has a headache, lost appetite, maybe smokes.

“You shouldn’t put your hand on anyone, especially a teenager’s cough, and you shouldn’t think, it won’t happen to me here and it will only happen to others, it can happen from the sixth or fifth grade,” says the allergist doctor.

Children do not hide it – in some classes 8 out of 10 students smoke:

“About 80 percent of my friends and acquaintances actually smoke.”

“I think there’s a stress reduction here, when you just cook it, it seems easier to do.”

Sometimes parents buy electronic cigarettes for children, mistakenly thinking that they are less harmful than traditional ones.

“There is a variety in the composition – both stabilizers, and the same tobacco and nicotine, and you can also add various narcotic substances to those electronic cigarettes, which is why it turns out that teenagers are using them,” comments the children’s allergist.

“The possibility of mixing the liquid in those reusable electronic cigarettes is all kinds of cbd, cannabidiol, similar things, maybe they themselves mix something and put it there, and poisonings and people end up in hospitals,” says Darius Sadaunykas, the representative of the Narcotics Control Department.

The composition may contain rat poison

Electronic cigarettes, even without impurities, are dangerous for children with chronic respiratory diseases, because the protective mucosa is already damaged. The children themselves tell what is added to electronic cigarettes:

“Sometimes when they put in rat poison, it can be bad, it can make you vomit.”

“Not only rat poison, all kinds of other drugs, and those herbs, it’s appalling.”

“Those who use it, they really do not know what they are using specifically and what the composition is, because those who produce it, do not know exactly what they are producing,” assures doctor toxicologist Gabija Laubner-Sakalauskienė.

Neither the doctors nor the police count how many children are poisoned by electronic cigarettes. Perhaps they are afraid that the statistics can be very unfavorable.

Learn more about it in the video report at the top of the article.