wo days after inhaling nitrous oxide directly from a handheld canister, a 23-year-old man still hurt every time he swallowed. His voice was hoarse, and when doctors looked inside his mouth, they found white, swollen tissue across the roof of his mouth, his uvula, and his throat.
The diagnosis was frostbite. Physicians at the University of Virginia described the case in July 2025 in the New England Journal of Medicine. It documents an uncommon but avoidable injury from a product that the FDA continues to warn people not to inhale.
