Stockholm - Smokers who refrain from smoking at least four weeks before undergoing surgery reduce their risks of sustaining complications after the procedure, according to a new study.

Smokers are more likely to suffer from postoperative complications including infections of the operation wound or from wounds that heal poorly than other patients.

Surgeon David Lindstrom's dissertation, presented at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, suggested that patients who refrain from smoking as recently as four weeks before an operation can reap several benefits.

Lindstrom studied 117 patients of which half were offered anti-smoking treatment. Patients in the control group, who were not offered anti-smoking treatment but standard care, sustained about twice as many complications as those who were offered the treatment.

"Complications are hard on the patients and expensive for the healthcare system," Lindstrom said.

Lindstrom, a surgeon at the Sodersjukhuset hospital in Stockholm, said that since anti-smoking treatment help "is both efficient and cheap compared to other preventive measures, it should always be offered prior to surgery."

Another effect was that quite a large number of patients who were offered the anti-smoking treatment quit smoking. The dissertation said 58 per cent of those who were offered the treatment stopped smoking prior to the surgery and a third were still non-smokers a year after the operation.

"This is a very good result compared to other smoking cessation programmes. It seems that the operation serves as a motivational factor," Lindstrom said.

The dissertation's title: "The impact of tobacco use on postoperative complications".