Aussie Doc: Don't Treat Smokers

An Australian doctor is declaring that surgeons should avoid performing certain kinds of operations on smokers.

Considering the risks that their smoking poses during surgery, he thinks they should just forget about procedures like breast reconstruction and joint replacement:

"In healthcare systems with finite resources, preferring non-smokers over smokers for a limited number of procedures will deliver greater clinical benefit to individuals and the community," [the doctor] said in the latest issue of the British Medical Journal.

"To fail to implement such a clinical judgment would be to sacrifice sensible clinical judgment for the sake of a non-discriminatory principle."

[He] said smoking ahead of surgery increased cardiac and pulmonary complications, impaired tissue healing, and was associated with infection rates up to six times higher than in non-smokers.

The last time I heard, pregnancy -- an entirely optional activity in almost all cases -- had a much higher complication and infection rate than non-pregnancy.

Perhaps it's time to stop wasting resources by treating pregnant women for certain conditions since they obviously haven't been taking the health care system's expenses into account.

Deny smokers surgery [The Australian]

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