Surgery - quitting smoking; Surgery - quitting tobacco; Wound healing - smoking
Quitting smoking and other nicotine products, including e-cigarettes, before surgery can improve your recovery and outcome after surgery.
Most people who successfully quit smoking have tried and failed many times. Don't give up. Learning from your past tries can help you succeed.
Tar, nicotine, and other chemicals from smoking can increase your risk for many health problems. These include heart and blood vessel problems, such as:
Smoking also increases your risk for different types of cancer, including cancer of the:
Smoking leads to lung problems, such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Smoking also makes asthma harder to control.
Some smokers switch to smokeless tobacco instead of quitting tobacco completely. But using smokeless tobacco still carries health risks, such as:
Smokers who have surgery have a higher chance than nonsmokers of blood clots forming in their legs. These clots may travel to and damage the lungs.
Smoking decreases the amount of oxygen that reaches the cells in your surgical wound. As a result, your wound may heal more slowly and is more likely to become infected.
All smokers carry an increased risk for heart and lung problems. Even when your surgery goes smoothly, smoking causes your body, heart, and lungs to work harder than if you did not smoke.
Most health care providers will tell you to stop using cigarettes and tobacco at least 4 weeks before your surgery. Stretching the time between quitting smoking and your surgery out to at least 10 weeks can decrease your risk for problems even more. Like any addiction, quitting tobacco is difficult. There are many ways to quit smoking and many resources to help you, such as:
Using nicotine gum around the time of surgery is not encouraged. The nicotine will still interfere with the healing of your surgical wound and have the same effect on your general health as using cigarettes and tobacco.
McEvoy MD, Blitz JD, Borgmeier E. Perioperative medicine. In: Pardo MC, ed. Miller's Basics of Anesthesia. 8th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2023:chap 42.
Yepuri N, Pruekprasert N, Cooney RN. Surgical complications. In: Townsend CM Jr, Beauchamp RD, Evers BM, Mattox KL, eds. Sabiston Textbook of Surgery. 21st ed. St Louis, MO: Elsevier; 2022:chap 12.
BACK TO TOPReview Date: 9/30/2024
Reviewed By: Linda J. Vorvick, MD, Clinical Professor, Department of Family Medicine, UW Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Also reviewed by David C. Dugdale, MD, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.
Health Content Provider
06/01/2025
|
A.D.A.M., Inc. is accredited by URAC, for Health Content Provider (www.urac.org). URAC's accreditation program is an independent audit to verify that A.D.A.M. follows rigorous standards of quality and accountability. A.D.A.M. is among the first to achieve this important distinction for online health information and services. Learn more about A.D.A.M.'s editorial policy, editorial process and privacy policy. A.D.A.M. is also a founding member of Hi-Ethics. This site complied with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information from 1995 to 2022, after which HON (Health On the Net, a not-for-profit organization that promoted transparent and reliable health information online) was discontinued. |
The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. © 1997- 2024 A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.