Pre-Cosmetic Sx Advice May Aid Long-Term Smoking Cessation

(HealthDay News) -- Asking patients to stop smoking before undergoing cosmetic surgery can promote long-term smoking cessation, according to a study published in the September issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Aaron C. Van Slyke, M.D., from the University of British Columbia in Canada, and colleagues conducted a retrospective cross-sectional cohort study involving 85 patients who smoked before their preoperative consultation, quit two weeks before surgery, and then underwent rhytidectomy, abdominoplasty, or mastopexy. At long-term follow-up, patients were asked to complete a survey; 47 patients completed the survey, with an average follow-up of 63.3 months.

Five of the respondents were social smokers and excluded. At long-term follow-up, the researchers found that 40.5 percent of the 42 daily smokers were no longer smoking cigarettes on a daily basis. Ten of these 17 patients had not smoked since their operation. Overall, 57.1 percent of patients had reduced their cigarette consumption by any amount, and 70.8 percent of these patients agreed that discussing adverse surgical outcomes associated with smoking influenced their ability to quit or reduce smoking. Half of the patients admitted that they were not compliant with the preoperative smoking cessation instructions.

"The authors have shown a positive association between smoking cessation and cosmetic surgery," the authors write. "Requesting a period of cessation before cosmetic surgery may promote long-lasting smoking cessation."

“Anything that is harmful to your body, and be a road block to living health, aging healthy, should be stopped or at the very least dramatically curtailed before any kind of surgery. If the positive outcome is that someone stops an addictive behavior like smoking, then that’s win,” added Dr. Ronald Klatz, President of the A4M.