Study:Smokers take a long time to recover after surgery

Smokers take a long time to recover and heal after any surgery undergone by them according to surgeons and physicians.

According to Dr.S.Rangaswami, veteran orthopaedic surgeon and vice-chancellor, Ramachandra University, Chennai, ‘Post-operative complications are higher in smokers. Smoking increases cardiac and pulmonary complications, impairs tissue healing which increase the cost of medical care.The healing process, especially bone-healing among smokers takes a very long time. In orthopaedic surgeries like knee and hip replacement, chances of the smokers getting infection were more compared to non-smokers.’

‘Smokers have to spend more days in the intensive care units and take more medication than the non-smokers,’ says Dr.P.Satish, eminent surgeon.The earliest one quits smoking, it is better for the person and his son or her family. He also said, ‘cardiovascular surgeries for smokers posed a lot of problems to the medical fraternity. Administering anaesthsia for smokers is a major problem since the lungs would have become weak because of their passion for smoking.Since anaesthesia was administered through the lungs, healthy lungs is a precondition for any surgery. We usually ask smokers to quit smoking atleast two weeks prior to the surgery if it is elective in nature.But we prefer them to quit smoking once and for all.’

Dr.Rangaswamy also pointed out that medical professionals in welfare states like Australia and USA were demanding that smokers be kept out of their state-funded national health schemes.The British Medical journal has published a paper by Dr.Mathew J.Peters, associate professor department of thoracic medicine, Concord Repatriation General Hospital, New South Wales, Australia that it was ethical to implement a policy those who are unwilling or unable to stop smoking should have low priority for or be excluded from certain selective surgical procedures including plastic and reconstructive surgeries and orthopaedic surgeries’

‘This is due to the 38 percent more expenses incurred by the state exchequer in the case of smokers. The argument is that if the government can save the additional expenses spent on smokers, more and more people would get state-of –the-art treatment and medicine.As on date, bill for smokers take a big cut in public money’.Dr.Rangaswamy said.