Dr Laura Crotty Alexander Previews Research on EVALI, Vaping Diseases in the Time of COVID

Laura Crotty Alexander, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, previews her talk "EVALI and Other Vaping Diseases in the Time of COVID and Beyond," to be presented at this year's American Thoracic Society (ATS) meeting. Crotty Alexander is also the section chief of pulmonary critical care at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System.

Transcript:

Can you introduce yourself and give a preview of your talk "EVALI and Other Vaping Diseases in the Time of COVID and Beyond?"

I'm Laura Crotty Alexander. I'm an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego. I'm the section chief of pulmonary critical care at the VA San Diego Healthcare System.

I've been working in the field of e-cigarettes for over 8 years, so I got very interested in the e-cigarette or vaping associated lung injury epidemic, also called EVALI, that began in 2019, and is ongoing.

We have an entire symposium dedicated to EVALI and my talk, in particular, dives into some of the interesting facets of this epidemic that began in 2019 and is ongoing, and how to really separate it out from all the other vaping-associated health effects and lung effects in particular, that we've seen over the past decade. I'll be talking about different chemicals that are responsible for EVALI, in particular, and other lung diseases that are caused by vaping.

What are you most looking forward to at ATS 2021?

I would say that I'm looking forward to "seeing" people that I usually only see at the ATS every year, I'm still looking forward to that. It'll be good to see faces via Zoom and chatting via text and interacting with a lot of people through DocMatter. I think it'll be more social than at least last year, so it'll be a step in the right direction.