Stopping Smoking Reduces Complications

The risks of smoking are well known: cancer, and heart and lung disease. Now, a new study shows that a person who stops smoking before surgery faces less risk of postoperative complications.

According to results of the Swedish study conducted in September, smokers who undergo surgery are roughly twice as likely to suffer complications, such as infections and poorly healing wounds. The study did not look at the length of the time between when a person stops smoking and has surgery.

In addition, numerous participants who quit smoking before surgery as part of the study quit for short and long periods of time after the surgery. About one-third of participants were still nonsmokers a year after surgery.

Read more about the study.

Smoking also affects joint pain.

According to a study in the Annals of Rheumatic Diseases, men who smoke and have osteoarthritis of the knee have greater cartilage loss and more severe pain than men who do not smoke. Smokers were twice as likely to have significant cartilage loss than nonsmokers.

Reasons that may explain this include:

• Smoking may disorder the cells and deter cell production in cartilage.
• Smoking may raise levels of toxins in the blood, contributing to cartilage loss.
• Smoking may increase carbon monoxide levels in the blood, affecting blood oxygenation, which could impede cartilage repair.