Smoking intensity alert

As a vascular fellow, I was taught not to perform any open bypass procedures on those patients who claudicated and who still smoked. It was considered a waste of resources on someone who could improve his or her symptoms by stopping smoking and going on an exercise regimen. When the patient had rest pain or a nonhealing ulcer, however, we went ahead with our open bypass clinic to prevent limb loss. We did recognize that our patency rates were lower if the patient still smoked, and we knew they were high risk for other complications as well.
Source: Journal of Vascular Surgery - Category: Surgery Authors: Tags: Invited commentary Source Type: research