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Teen's jaw shattered in freak vape explosion

His mouth had to be wired shut for six weeks.

An e-cigarette exploded in the mouth of a 17-year-old boy from Nevada and shattered his jaw and broke several of his teeth.
Austin Adams was using the vaporizer pen, also called vape pen, to get rid of his addiction to tobacco when the smoking tool's battery overheated and exploded.
Adams was left with a gaping hole in his gums and required surgery for sewing his gum line back together, putting plates along his jawbone and issuing him temporary braces to keep his remaining teeth aligned. His mouth had to be wired shut for six weeks and his diet was limited to liquids and pureed foods.
The teenager's mother, Kailani Burton, had bought the e-cigarette from a company called VGOD, to help her son quit smoking. "Austin came in with his hand up to his mouth. He was in shock and unable to speak," Daily Mail quoted Burton, 45, as saying in NBC News.
Although the accident occurred in March 2018, the case came to light after Dr. Katie Russell, one of the trauma surgeons who treated Adams, profiled the case on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The teen underwent 'open reduction and internal fixation of the fracture, dental extraction, and debridement of devitalized tissue,' according to Russell.
Post the traumatic accident, the FDA last week sought a detailed information about the types of batteries developers are hoping to use, as well as safety precautions to minimize the likelihood of the product exploding, overheating, or catching fire.

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Source: New England Medical Journal