Why Smoking and Plastic Surgery Don’t Mix
If you’re a smoker and are considering a plastic surgery procedure, especially one involving your skin, you need to think of a way to kick the habit.
In this issue, we’ll talk about why.
How Smoking Hurts Your Skin
Smoking is bad for just about all parts of your body, and it does a particularly nasty job on your skin. Among other things, it decreases vitamin-A levels in the skin, depletes it of oxygen, and leads to broken capillaries and dilated blood vessels.
Because smoking will constrict the circulation, your skin will be much more prone to increased crinkling, more wrinkles and premature aging.
Smoking Gets In The Way Of Healing
The increased risk of broken capillaries means that a smoker’s skin will not heal as well as a non-smoker’s. The smoker will most likely also experience more scarring as a result of the nicotine in the system.
In some plastic surgery procedures, your doctor will actually move skin and other tissue areas around, which alters the blood supply to those areas. If the correct amount of oxygen isn’t available, the affected tissue could actually die off.
Smokers Require More Anesthesia
A 2015 study, which was presented at the European Society of Anesthesiology, confirmed that smokers by and large
require more – 33% more – anesthesia during surgeries than non-smokers. The smokers also needed 23% more pain medication following their procedures.
All Nicotine Products Should Be Avoided
Because nicotine is the primary culprit we’re talking about, you should also know that going with the patch or even nicotine gum will also make it harder for you to experience the desired effects from plastic surgery.
Ready For The New You? Call Sadrian Plastic Surgery, Laser And Skin Care Institute of San Diego
