|
 Among patients who had surgery for lung cancer, nonsmokers had fewer
complications than smokers. But quitting even just a few months
before surgery reduced patients' risks of complications.
"Even a short period of four weeks of preoperative cessation may
contribute to a major risk reduction," said Dr. David Lindstrom of
Uppsala Academic Hospital in Sweden, who wasn't involved with the
new study.
Nearly 230,000 new cases of lung cancer will be diagnosed in the
U.S. in 2019, the American Cancer Society estimates.
Previous studies indicate that about a third of patients are current
smokers at the time of diagnosis, and 20 percent are current smokers
at the time of surgery, Mariko Fukui and colleagues at the Juntendo
University School of Medicine in Tokyo wrote in their report of the
study in Annals of Thoracic Surgery.
The researchers studied 666 patients who had surgery for lung cancer
between 2012-2016, including 256 never-smokers and 410 current or
previous smokers.
During the three months following the operations, about 32 percent
of current smokers had respiratory complications, as compared to 22
percent of previous smokers and 3.5 percent of non-smokers.
Generally, smokers were older, had poorer lung function, needed
longer operations, and lost more blood during surgery.
The more time that elapsed since smokers had quit, the lower their
risk of postoperative problems. Complication rates were 13 percent
for current smokers, 10 percent for patients who stopped smoking
less than a month before surgery, 8.5 percent for people who quit
one to three months before surgery, 6.3 percent for three to six
months, six percent for six months to a year, and five percent for
former smokers who had quit more than a year before their surgery.
[to top of second column] |
"Lung surgery outcomes are not only linked to long-term survival but
to quality of life, and lung resection and lung cancer tend to
decrease both of them," said Dr. Maria Rodriguez Perez of Clinica
Universidad de Navarra in Madrid, Spain, who researches lung cancer
and surgery outcomes but wasn't involved in this study.
"Nowadays, we tend to look at the patient as a whole, focusing not
only on the specific pathology but on other systems that interact
and could have a detrimental effect on outcomes," she told Reuters
Health by email. "Smoking cessation should be, without a doubt, one
of the pillars of these programs."
Lindstrom added, "It's never too late to stop smoking. Even if the
previous smoking history may have caused cancer, you may still
benefit from decreased risk of surgical complications and have an
increased life expectancy if you stop."
"Any kind of forthcoming surgical procedure is a good time to try to
stop smoking," said Lindstrom, who has studied the effect of smoking
cessation on outcomes of orthopedic surgery. "And when you decide to
deal with it, take all the help you can get with motivational
counseling, websites, apps and professionals."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2SVCIf5 Annals of Thoracic Surgery, online
January 2, 2019.
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
 |
