Does smoking have a significant impact on wound healing?

Whether smoking has a greater impact on wound healing needs to be analyzed objectively based on the primary disease of the patient’s surgery, as well as the wound healing situation. First, if the patient underwent superficial tissue removal, such as abdominal wall lipoma, breast fibroma, popliteal cysts and other smaller operations. The patient’s incision healing is still possible after surgery, and a small amount of smoking at this time has no serious effect on wound healing. Second, if the patient undergoes surgery for vascular lesions, such as high ligation plus segmental stripping for saphenous varicose veins, or radical surgery for neoplastic lesions, such as radical treatment of gastric cancer for malignant tumors of the stomach. In this case, the patient’s wound is often large, and smoking may cause spasmodic constriction of blood vessels, affecting the blood supply to the incision and prolonging the healing time of the incision. In this case, smoking is not recommended until the incision is completely healed.