Risk reduction before surgery. The role of the primary care provider in preoperative smoking and alcohol cessation.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Daily smokers and hazardous drinkers are high-risk patients, developing 2-4 times more complications after surgery. Preoperative smoking and alcohol cessation for four to eight weeks prior to surgery halves this complication rate. The patients' preoperative contact with the surgical departments might be too brief for the hospital to initiate these programmes. Therefore, it was relevant to evaluate a new clinical practice which combined the general practitioner's (GP) referral to surgery with a referral to a smoking and alcohol intervention in the surgical pathway.

Methods

The design was an exploratory prospective trial. The outcome measured was the number of patients referred to a preoperative smoking and alcohol cessation programme at the same time as being refer

SUBMITTER: Tonnesen H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2882918 | biostudies-literature | 2010 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature