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  • Here's What Happens If You Don't Quit Smoking Before Your Surgery
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Okay, smoking and plastic surgery. Don't smoke. Smoking is going to kill you. I can get on my soap box and give you a big lecture, but let's get down to the nitty gritty here. There are certain operations I simply won't do on smokers. Breast lift, tummy tuck, and face lift. I'd like you to quit smoking for 6 weeks before those procedures, not a single cigarette. If I found out you've been smoking, we really will cancel your surgery. The reason is, is that smoking is deleterious to oxygen delivery. It lasts for a while after you stop smoking, so it's got to be out of your system for a while. Certainly it's horrible if you're smoking actively when you have these things done.

In smoke, besides tons of carcinogens, or things that cause cancer are carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. These two molecules bind to hemoglobin. Hemoglobin carries oxygen. They bind to it much stronger than oxygen. As the blood comes to your lungs and says, "Hey, we need oxygen for the tissues", the carbon monoxide doesn't want to get off the molecule. The blood goes back out to the tissue, but doesn't have oxygen with it to supply the tissue. In mastopexy, tummy tuck, and face lift, we have skin flaps with a diminished blood supply. You have a diminished blood supply with blood that's coming to it with diminished oxygen, and that's a prescription for disaster. We get widened scars, you can get areas of skin loss or necrosis or gangrene. So no smoking for mastopexy, tummy tuck, or face lift for six weeks before surgery in my book.

If you're having a breast augmentation, if you're having a liposuction, if you're having a brow lift, it probably doesn't matter as much, and I don't make a big deal about it. I'll encourage you to stop smoking, but only in those other surgeries where we have large skin flaps, you just have to stop smoking for a good result. If you can't do it, you don't need to be doing it because you'll have a big problem with it. So don't smoke. You'll get healthier and have better plastic surgery.

Here's What Happens If You Don't Quit Smoking Before Your Surgery

Dr. Clayton Moliver explains what happens when surgery is performed on a smoker. (Spoiler alert: It's not good!)