A VAPER who had surgery after getting a lung-eating infection was kept alive by double-D breast implants.
Davey Bauer, 34, from DeSoto, Massachusetts, went through a cartridge of e-cigarette liquid a day for nearly 10 years before he was struck down with pseudomonas bacteria.
He had been in good health previously but the landscaper’s condition deteriorated rapidly and doctors feared he was at the “end of the road”.
However, they managed to operate on him in May thanks to the help of the prosthetic breasts, which were used to stabilise his heart while doctors replaced his lungs.
Davey’s doctor Dr Ankit Bharat, of Northwestern Medicine, said the surgeon’s needed a “crash course” in implants to pull it off.
He told PEOPLE: “We had to come up with something very creative. This is the only way we could logically create a solution that may give the patient a fighting chance.
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“It was kind of almost magical to see when we took out all of the old lungs within a matter of hours, his body started to show signs of healing and recovery
“His heart started to get stronger without all the bacteria.”
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a type of bacteria that does not normally cause infections except in people who already have weakened immune systems, according to the NHS.
There were 4,745 cases reported in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2018, up 10.7 per cent since 2009, according to Public Health England.
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The bacteria causes infections in the blood, lungs or other parts of the body and is becoming harder to treat because of antibiotic resistance.
It is most common in people who are in hospital, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Davey contracted it after initially going to hospital for flu in April.
He had been vaping for nearly a decade because it “seemed like a healthier alternative” to smoking, he said.
Vapes are seen as healthier than cigarettes as they do not contain cancer-causing chemicals.
But little is known about their long-term effects, while countless studies have shown they are not without risk.
Davey went to urgent care for the flu but was told he only had “a little bit of pneumonia” and sent home with antibiotics, his girlfriend of seven years Susan said.
The next day he could barely move and she drove him to the emergency department at a local hospital where he caught the bacteria.
The infection became fulminant, the medical term for when the body is unable to clear it and the bacteria “eats away the lung and causes more and more pus”, Dr Bharat said.
He was transferred to Chicago’s Northwestern Medicine “as a last ditch effort” to save his life.
Davey went into deadly cardiac arrest at the hospital and surgeons came up with the plan to replace his lungs.
They drained all his blood during the surgery and the implants were used to keep the heart directly in the middle of his chest.
Meanwhile, artificial lungs were used to keep him breathing while they removed his own disease-infested organs.
He was given a lung transplant within days thanks to a donor at a nearby centre and Davey is now recovering as an outpatient, with regular therapy and tests.
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Davey said he believes that vaping “contributed to the situation” and is warning people against the “stupid habit”.
Dr Bharat said “vaping played a big part in how sick Davey got” because he was otherwise fit and healthy.
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