Dr Farsalinos

Writing on Twitter/X, Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos stated: “It is irresponsible and unacceptable for a scientist to make media statements before completing/publishing his study and while ignoring the strong epidemiological evidence against his media claims.”

Last Monday, Planet of the Vapes detailed how Manchester Metropolitan University’s Maxime Boidin claimed his current work:

• Shows “vaping may be more dangerous to the body than cigarettes”
• Determines the long-term impact of vaping
• Contradicts claims that vaping is at least 95% safer than smoking
• Highlights that people can vape non-stop, all day
• Shows “that vaping can cause significant harm to a person”

In 2024, Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos explained how swapping tobacco products for vapes is as beneficial to individual health as stopping smoking without using any smoking cessation product “for patients after coronary angioplasty”. Coronary angioplasty is a procedure that widens blocked or narrowed coronary arteries.

Unlike Boidin’s work that uses just 20 vapers, Dr Farsalinos cited a cohort study that examined 17,973 smoking patients.

The study, led by Ki Hong Choi from the Heart Vascular Stroke Institute at Seoul’s Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, concluded “Among smokers who underwent PCI for coronary artery disease, switching to E-cigarette use (particularly complete transition) or quitting smoking was associated with reduced MACE [major adverse cardiac events] risk than with continued combustible cigarette use.”

Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos commented: “After a median follow-up of 2.4 years, the authors identified that switching to e-cigarette use had identical benefits in reducing the risk for MACE to quitting smoking without the use of alternatives (18% risk reduction for switchers vs. 13% risk reduction for quitters). 

“Astonishingly, this benefit referred to dual users and exclusive vapers combined, which means that dual users were included in the analysis. When dual users were specifically compared to exclusive vapers, the latter had a 29% reduced risk, verifying the importance of complete switching from smoking to e-cigarette use and implying that the benefits for exclusive vapers were even stronger. 

“Benefits were also observed for all-cause mortality, myocardial infarction, repeat revascularization and death from cardiovascular disease, pulmonary disease and cancer, although not all outcomes reached statistical significance (most likely due to the small sample size).

“The study identifies the well-known difficulty in quitting smoking, with half of the smoking patients being unable to quit even after being diagnosed with smoking-related cardiovascular disease. I can imagine that many healthcare professionals have strongly condemned any attempt of such patients to quit smoking with the help of e-cigarettes. This means that fewer patients had the chance to make a lifestyle change that would benefit their health. 

“This study will be the beginning of the end for the misconception that nicotine use is a strong risk factor for cardiovascular disease, a misconception that is widely spread not only among non-experts but also among healthcare professionals. It also exposes the problematic recent metanalysis which claimed that e-cigarettes confer the same cardiovascular risk as smoking, a metanalysis that will soon be heavily criticized in a paper that is currently under review.”

Photo Credit:

• Image created by author with logo added, Dr Farsalinos added

Dave Cross

Journalist at POTV

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Dave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.