RICHMOND, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – A new Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association data analysis shows that hospital emergency department visits where vaping is documented during the patient diagnosis process have dramatically increased in recent years. A VHHA release says this is happening along with a corresponding decline in the number of hospital ED visits involving patient diagnoses that include the use of traditional tobacco products such as cigarettes and chewing tobacco.
The analysis shows that the number of ED visits involving patients who vape have more than doubled from 2020 to 2023 from 23,630 to just over 49,000. That’s a nearly 109-percent increase over that time.

VHHA data says in 2020, ED visits in which vaping was recorded as a tobacco-related diagnosis among patients accounted for just 4.2 percent of ED visits, and was up to nearly 11-percent by the end of 2023. Meanwhile, the number of ED visits in which patients were diagnosed with traditional tobacco use dropped 25.4 percent between 2020 and 2023, from just under 539,000 in 2020 and to about 402,000 in 2023.

VHHA says, though, conventional tobacco products still account for the majority of ED visits with a tobacco or vaping-related diagnosis.