The UKs NHS has announced that smokers may have to quit if they want surgery.

NHS considers telling smokers to quit or risk having surgery refused.

A Primary Care trust (the organizations which manage the allocation of resources in the UK's NHS) has proposed that smokers could be refused treatment until they quit smoking.

The trust - Leicester City West Primary Care Trust - is putting the idea up for consultation.Their plan would involve smokers being given counselling and nicotine patches to help them stop. But the patients would have to give a blood sample to prove they had quit before being put on the waiting list and admitted for elective non-emergency surgery.

The plan would NOT cover emergency surgery. Rod Moore, the assistant director of public health at Leicester City West Primary Care Trust, said it should become the norm for patients to stop smoking before all routine surgery.

"If people give up smoking prior to planned operations it will improve their recovery," he said.

"It would reduce heart and lung complications and wounds would heal faster. Our purpose is not to deny patients access to operations but to see if the outcomes can be improved."

He added: "This will not be a blanket ban on them receiving surgery."


This content was created on Wed 6 June 2007

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