Smoking Cessation for Preoperative Optimization

Cigarette smoking is associated with pulmonary and cardiovascular disease and confers increased postoperative morbidity and mortality. Smoking cessation in the weeks before surgery can mitigate these risks, and surgeons should screen patients for smoking before a scheduled operation so that appropriate smoking cessation education and resources can be given. Interventions that combine nicotine replacement therapy, pharmacotherapy, and counseling are effective to achieve durable smoking cessation. When trying to stop smoking in the preoperative period, surgical patients experience much higher than average cessation rates compared with the general population, indicating that the time around surgery is ripe for motivating and sustaining behavior change. This chapter summarizes the impact of smoking on postoperative outcomes in abdominal and colorectal surgery, the benefits of smoking cessation, and the impact of interventions aimed to reduce smoking before surgery.