Dutch hospitals do 1-day study into emergency room patients with nicotine-related issues
Today, Dutch hospitals will record how many patients come to the emergency room with medical problems caused by smoking, vaping, or using snus. Dutch doctors want to map out the actual impact of nicotine on emergency care, NOS reports.
People regularly end up in the emergency room with complaints related to long-term smoking, like heart problems, strokes, and chronic bronchitis. Doctors have long suspected that a growing number of people require emergency care due to nicotine use. “We now want to know for sure,” Nicole Kraiijvanger, an emergency physician at Leiden University Medical Center and the initiator of this study, told NOS.
Doctors are also increasingly concerned about teenagers vaping. Research by the Trimbos Institute showed that a quarter of 12 to 16-year-olds have used a vape at least once. Four percent do so daily. Nicotine concentrations in vapes are high and very addictive due to the use of nicotine salts that quickly reach the brain. Unlike with cigarettes, where it often takes years to become seriously ill, children who vape can quickly develop serious illnesses.
“Nicotine is particularly bad for teenagers, because it disrupts brain development,” Esther Croes, an epidemiologist at the Trimbos Institute, explained to NOS. “This can cause permanent brain damage and mental health problems like anxiety disorders, concentration problems, and depression. Brain damage is irreversible.”
That is part of the reason why the professional associations of emergency physicians, pediatriticians, pulmonologists, the Trimbos Institute, and the vaping-prevention platform Vapen#Jouwkeuze want to get he facts straight. The results of today’s study should help improve policies to prevent smoking and vaping.
