Smoking and surgery

If you continue to smoke right up to the time you have surgery, you will be more likely to:

• starve your heart of oxygen
• form blood clots in your veins
• find it harder to breathe during and after surgery
• impair the healing of bones, skin and wounds
• reduce the effect of certain drugs.

Nicotine in cigarette smoke increases your heart rate and blood pressure, making your heart work harder so that it needs more oxygen. The carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke competes with the oxygen in your blood, making it harder to get the oxygen you need for your heart and body.

Chemicals in cigarette smoke make your blood thicker, stickier and more likely to clot, and can paralyse and destroy the cilia in your lungs (tiny hairs that act like brooms) which work to keep your lungs clear. Smoking increases the amount of mucus in your lungs, and narrows your airways. This can increase the likelihood of your airways, (and the air sacs in your lungs) partially collapsing, making it harder to breathe.

Smoking decreases your resistance to infection, and you will have a higher risk for chest and wound infections after surgery. You are more likely to have longer healing times, problems with new scars opening up, and bad scarring. Smoking can also slow down and interfere with the healing of bones and other body tissues.

It is important that your anaesthetist is aware of your smoking. You should notify your anaesthetist if you smoke and discuss your options prior to your surgery.

Many surgical procedures require you to have an anaesthetic drug which can put your body under stress and may lower your resistance to infection. If you smoke, your body is less able to cope with the stress this may cause.

Chemicals in cigarette smoke interfere with the rate at which certain drugs break down in your body; as a result, you may need higher doses of anaesthetic or pain relieving medication.

After surgery it is important that you do not start smoking again (staying stopped), even if you only quit 12 hours before surgery.

Smoking makes recovery harder by:

• stressing your heart
• affecting your blood pressure
• reducing oxygen in your blood and body tissues
• damaging your lungs.

By stopping smoking well before surgery you will be more likely to have a faster recovery, better wound healing, a shorter stay in hospital and be less likely to need further surgery.