Saturday Study: Smoking and Crohn's

I think everyone knows how idiotic smoking is however people still do it. The reason this came to my mind was that many studies look at Crohn's patients over time but they never seperate out the patients that were smoking and not smoking. I would think the patients who don't smoke would get better results of most treatments and have fewer complications. Smoking however according to this report from the American Lung Association that shows that from 1965-2009 the annual prevalence of smoking declined 55%. 

When looking at the studies of how smoking effects Crohn's. This study showed that when examining the rates of needing additional surgery after 5 years for non-smokers was 20% while 36% for smokers. At 10 years the need for repeat surgery was 41% for nonsmokers and 70% for smokers. It seems as if the longer someone with Crohn’s smokes the more likely they are to require surgery. It seems as if smoking does increase the chances of requiring additional surgery. This study concluded that smokers have a higher increase in the risk of flare up. However, people that use to smoke have risks comparable to non-smokers. The policy recommendation therefore should be to not smoke and if you are smoking to stop smoking to decrease the chances of requiring surgery and also decreasing the chances of a flare up.