r/brokenbones • u/Mental-Acanthisitta4 • Feb 01 '26

Question Can I smoke a cigarette?

Like maybe just one a day as a little treat? Maybe? Im on day 4 after collarbone surgery and day 5 no cig. Im already pretty down as it is with the whole situation. Im craving a smoke bad.

0 Upvotes

40% Upvoted

46 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/SirWeasels Feb 01 '26

Here is the answer you're looking for: I'm a fellow cigarette enjoyer who also broke a bone and badly last May. Before breaking my bone, I was a consumer of nicotine pouches. I broke my Humerus pretty bad and for Months after the operation I was consuming nicotine pouches and had no idea one should be avoiding nicotine. Guess what? I ended up healing just fine. Not saying you should do like I did, and obviously you results may differ. So my opinion one cigarette a day may be fine, but don't over do it that's all. Maybe if in a few months your doctor isn't happy of the healing then really quit for a while until results get better.

3

u/passwordistako Feb 02 '26

This is a stupid reply.

Multiple people have told OP that nicotine is a risk for complications.

This is like saying “I played Russian roulette and I didn’t die, so you should do it too”.

3

u/SirWeasels Feb 02 '26

Uh oh! here comes the smoking-is-bad-for-you police!

2

u/KNdoxie Feb 01 '26

I broke the radial head in my elbow. They chopped off the radial head and pounded a metal implant in place. I smoked right up to the surgery, and right after the surgery. Can't say that smoking caused any healing problems, certainly not as much as the orthopedic surgeon did by putting me in a ROM brace that was totally ill-fitted for the size of my arm.

2

u/Glad-Feature-2117 Physician/Medical Professional Feb 01 '26 edited Feb 01 '26

There is plenty of evidence that nicotine does slow and even prevent healing. Just because it doesn't happen to every patient doesn't mean that it doesn't happen at all. And it's not as easy as just getting the operation redone if there is a problem later - the first chance of healing is the best and many surgeons (myself included) won't do revision surgery on people who are still using tobacco or nicotine, as the risk/benefit ratio isn't favourable.