Need advice before sugery!

[LindaRacine]

Bumping an old thread to just try and clarify something...

It seems the consensus is that if you quit/stop smoking before surgery the negative effects it has on healing/fusion either do not surface, or given enough time the damaging effects are reversed. My own basic internet research shows the same thing. Is that accurate?

Not that I smoke much at all. I've had maybe 2-4 cigarettes since Labor Day, when out drinking. However I spent the summer in Russia and well there the culture kind of imparted itself on me and I was smoking quite a bit when out at nights. Nothing like a daily habit, but quite a few through the night when out on weekends.

Anyway, not planning on smoking at all again before my surgery, which would be about a year away anyway. But just seeing how permanent the effects are...seems not at all.

Hi...

I work in a university spine practice that does a lot of complex surgery. With the exception of emergency surgery, our surgeons will not perform fusion surgery on anyone who smokes. They require 2 nicotine tests, at least a week apart. Nonetheless, some patients go back to smoking after surgery, and there's nothing we can do about it. I've known at least a dozen patients who went back to smoking and who have had to undergo multiple surgeries because they don't fuse. It's certainly possible that there are others who go back to smoking and we don't know it because they fuse, but I've never heard of one.

Personally, I would NEVER undergo a spinal fusion unless I was absolutely certain that I would not be tempted to return to smoking.

--Linda

[leahdragonfly]

Amen to that, Linda. One surgery is bad enough, repeats just plain suck!