Effect of preoperative smoking intervention on postoperative complications: a randomised clinical trial.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Nicotine and Smoking in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Their aim was to investigate the effect of preoperative smoking intervention on the frequency of postoperative complications in patients undergoing hip and knee replacement.

Why It Was Studied

Smokers are at higher risk of cardiopulmonary and wound-related postoperative complications than non-smokers.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 120 patients were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults, middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

The researchers did a randomised trial in three hospitals in Denmark. 120 patients were randomly assigned 6-8 weeks before scheduled surgery to either the control (n=60) or smoking intervention (60) group.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized study.

Because people in this Nicotine study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

An assessor, who was masked to the intervention, registered the occurrence of cardiopulmonary, renal, neurological, or surgical complications and duration of hospital admittance.

The main analysis was by intention to treat.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Arthroplasty, Replacement, Hip, Arthroplasty, Replacement, Knee, Counseling, Denmark, Ganglionic Stimulants, Length of Stay and Morbidity.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Nicotine and Smoking in 120 patients.

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2002 (Lancet (London, England)), a journal based in England.

More context: the related Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) library page, all human trials.