title: Behavior, knowledge, and attitude of surgeons and patients toward preoperative smoking cessation.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Tobacco smoking is a well-known risk factor for postoperative complications. Quitting smoking prior to surgery helps overcome those complications.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Surgeons' attention for educating their patients about the importance of smoking cessation prior to surgery is one of the most effective ways to reduce smoking-related surgical complications. The extent of advised patients by their surgeons has not been identified.
  
  
  METHODS
  A descriptive, comparative cross-sectional study using a survey was conducted in 2013 including eligible patients in King Khalid University Hospital. Simultaneously, 69 surgeons were included. All participant data were randomly collected and analyzed using Chi-square analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The frequency of smokers is more in surgical patients (37.5%) when compared to ex-smokers (12.5%) and passive smokers (8.3%), which were ex- and passive smokers, and it demonstrated an increased risk (P = 0.001) for surgery group compared to the nonsurgery group (P = 0.001). When comparing with nonsurgery group, most surgical patients agreed to quit smoking before surgery (95.3%). More than half (58.8%) of the patients said that they have been advised by their treating surgeons to quit smoking before surgery. Concerning the surgeons, 66 nonvascular and nonpediatric surgeons responded to the questionnaire (response rate: 22.83%). The majority of the surgeons (60.9%) were interacting with smoker patients. With regard to smoking cessation, 69.6% surgeons have advised smoker patients to stop smoking for more than 2 weeks before surgery. More than half of the surgeons (53.6%) believed that patients quit smoking after preoperative smoking cessation advice.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The surgeons and patients who participated in this study were aware that smoking cessation improves outcomes, but most of the surgeons did not provide brief advice about time duration to stop smoking.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, College of Medicine, King Khalid University Hospital, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Waseem M
authors.initials: WM
authors.lastname: Hajjar
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, College of Medicine, King Khalid University Hospital, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Sami A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Al-Nassar
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, College of Medicine, King Khalid University Hospital, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Reem M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Alahmadi
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, College of Medicine, King Khalid University Hospital, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Shahad M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Almohanna
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, College of Medicine, King Khalid University Hospital, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Sara M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Alhilali
keywords: Smoking cessation; surgical complications; tobacco smoking