A new study has found that people who stop smoking before surgery may become more sensitive to pain and need more pain medication during their recovery.
The research, published in the journal JNeurosci, helps explain why this happens and which parts of the brain are involved.
The study was led by Dr. Zhijie Lu from Fudan University Minhang Hospital and Dr. Kai Wei from Shanghai Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital. Their team studied 30 people who had quit smoking for a short time and compared them to 30 people who had never smoked.
They found that people who had recently stopped smoking had changes in how certain areas of their brain worked. These changes were linked to increased sensitivity to pain. As a result, these patients needed more pain relief after surgery, especially more opioids, compared to nonsmokers.
Interestingly, the study showed that the longer someone had quit smoking, the more pain-sensitive they became—up to a point.
However, this effect didn’t last forever. If people had been smoke-free for more than three months, their pain sensitivity seemed to return to normal. This supports earlier studies suggesting that pain sensitivity linked to quitting smoking is temporary.
The researchers also discovered that different brain regions were responsible for pain sensitivity and for the extra pain relief needed after surgery. This means the brain reacts in more than one way during nicotine withdrawal, and different systems may be involved in managing pain and responding to medications.
Dr. Wei explained that their goal is not to discourage people from quitting smoking before surgery. Instead, they want doctors and scientists to better understand why pain sensitivity goes up during early stages of quitting. This knowledge can help hospitals create better plans for managing pain without needing to rely so heavily on opioids.
The team is already working on finding other kinds of pain medications that might work better than opioids in patients who recently quit smoking. They are also looking into nicotine replacement therapies that can be used before surgery to ease withdrawal symptoms and reduce pain.
In short, this study shows that quitting smoking before surgery can make people feel more pain and need more pain medicine, but only for a short time. These effects seem to fade after about three months of not smoking.
By understanding how the brain changes during this time, researchers hope to find better ways to treat pain in people who quit smoking—without increasing the risks tied to opioid use.
If you care about pain, please read studies about vitamin K deficiency linked to hip fractures in old people, and these vitamins could help reduce bone fracture risk.
For more health information, please see recent studies that Krill oil could improve muscle health in older people, and eating yogurt linked to lower frailty in older people.
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