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Smoking could slow tendon healing

Respiratory Care Weekly, October 25, 2006

Smoking appears to be a culprit inhibiting tissue-to-bone healing and could be to blame for some of the failures of rotator cuff surgeries, according to the September Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. While it's not known why 5% to 40% of the procedures fail in the window of 30 to 90 days after the surgery, Leesa M. Galatz, M.D., first author of the study and assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, reports that rats given rotator cuff surgery and exposed to nicotine had a harder time healing and experienced more inflammation than the non-nicotine group.

"When you have an injury and a repair, new cells come in and start to facilitate healing," Galatz said. "When the new cells arrive, they make proteins such as collagen to form the junction between tendon and bone. And in the rats exposed to nicotine, we saw lower cellular proliferation."

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