I did it because telling people to quit is shown to increase the odds of quitting smoking. And it pains me every day to go into the hospital everyday and see the consequences of smoking.
Lung cancer is frankly trivial compared to the bad outcomes associated with lost physiologic reserve due to connective tissue damage and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. An overwhelming number of patients who smoke have bad surgical and medical outcomes attributable to smoking.
Poor tensile strength of connective tissue is associated with skin tears, diverticulitis, impaired wound healing, emphysema. I'm sure you can all spot an 50 year old smoker from a mile away: they're the ones who look like they're 70. That is simply the outward sign of something terribly wrong inside. These folks consistently have bad outcomes in the event of trauma, including surgery of any kind. Surgeries that are usually overnight stays become weeks in the ICU with infections and being stuck on the vent becasue we can't get their oxygen saturation back up after the OR. The loss of physiologic reserve leads to trauma patients who can't be weaned off ventilators, more tracheostomies, more inpatient infections, more of pretty much everything bad.
COPD similiarly decreases the physiologic reserve and leads to poor vent weaning in smokers who go in for surgery of any kind. We had a woman in the ICU last week for a brain surgery; now she's going to get a hole cut in her throat because it's her lungs that can't heal, so she's getting a "prophylactic tracheostomy" because it, believe it or not, causes less damage than leaving an orotracheal tube in indefinitely.
Children of smokers have a higher incidence of asthma.
I couldn't help but read the thread and think "what kind of doctor am I to not tell these folks the same thing I would tell any other smoker?"
To those I offended, I sincerely apologize, that was not my intent. I just don't want to see you or someone like you in the hospital, with complications of poor wound healing or other really ugly outcomes.
Lung cancer is frankly trivial compared to the bad outcomes associated with lost physiologic reserve due to connective tissue damage and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. An overwhelming number of patients who smoke have bad surgical and medical outcomes attributable to smoking.
Poor tensile strength of connective tissue is associated with skin tears, diverticulitis, impaired wound healing, emphysema. I'm sure you can all spot an 50 year old smoker from a mile away: they're the ones who look like they're 70. That is simply the outward sign of something terribly wrong inside. These folks consistently have bad outcomes in the event of trauma, including surgery of any kind. Surgeries that are usually overnight stays become weeks in the ICU with infections and being stuck on the vent becasue we can't get their oxygen saturation back up after the OR. The loss of physiologic reserve leads to trauma patients who can't be weaned off ventilators, more tracheostomies, more inpatient infections, more of pretty much everything bad.
COPD similiarly decreases the physiologic reserve and leads to poor vent weaning in smokers who go in for surgery of any kind. We had a woman in the ICU last week for a brain surgery; now she's going to get a hole cut in her throat because it's her lungs that can't heal, so she's getting a "prophylactic tracheostomy" because it, believe it or not, causes less damage than leaving an orotracheal tube in indefinitely.
Children of smokers have a higher incidence of asthma.
I couldn't help but read the thread and think "what kind of doctor am I to not tell these folks the same thing I would tell any other smoker?"
To those I offended, I sincerely apologize, that was not my intent. I just don't want to see you or someone like you in the hospital, with complications of poor wound healing or other really ugly outcomes.