By Inga Miller
Modesto Bee
Copyright 2008 Modesto Bee
MODESTO, Calif. — Paramedics are tracking an alarming trend of smoking among people on oxygen treatment, sometimes with deadly consequences.
Two people within the past two months have died in Tuolumne County and a third was badly burned in Manteca after apparently forgetting to turn off oxygen tanks before lighting cigarettes.
In all three cases, patients had tubes running from the tanks through tubes into their noses and the oxygen ignited, said Bill Caldera, paramedic and chief operations officer for Manteca District Ambulance. The organization also contracts with Tuolumne County, and Caldera picked up on the trend.
“I just want people to pay attention,” he said. “All you need is fuel, heat and oxygen to start a fire. If you put the oxygen near a flame or light a cigarette, that is all you need to start an inferno. And it can certainly kill you, as we are finding.”
He said there is nothing new about people smoking even after being prescribed oxygen; paramedics are trained to detect nicotine-stained fingernails as a sign of weakened health in patients. Sometimes, patients are on treatment because of long-standing smoking habits they haven’t managed to kick.
What is new, though, is patients failing to turn off their oxygen when they light up.
“I don’t know if people have just become kind of laissez-faire with it,” Caldera said. “I’ve been a paramedic for 29 years, and I have never come across one (of these cases) and then we had one in Manteca and two here (in Tuolumne County) in the last couple of months.”
“The risk was always there; we have always been warned about it,” said Kenny Hockett, paramedic supervisor and spokesman for Tuolumne County Ambulance. “I think people have become a little more comfortable with home oxygen and maybe they are taking it for granted because not every time they had oxygen in and smoked a cigarette there was a fire. But this is all preventable.”
Candles left in homes also present a risk and should not be near oxygen, they said.
In the first Tuolumne County case, Caldera said, a woman fell asleep with the oxygen and a cigarette. He said it is suspected the cigarette caught the hose on fire, the fumes made her pass out and that she died primarily of smoke inhalation.
In the other case, the flame a man was using to light a cigarette ignited a flash fire, Caldera said. He said the man was rushed to the University of California Medical Center in Sacramento but died 12 to 14 hours later of facial and respiratory burns.
The most recent case was Saturday night in Manteca, when a 54-year-old woman went to light a cigarette and suffered burns. She was rushed to San Joaquin General Hospital and then transferred to the University of California Medical Center in Sacramento, where she is being treated for facial and respiratory burns and is expected to live, Caldera said.