New study shows that smoking can harm hearing after surgery

According to J. Matthew Conoyer, MD at Vanderbilt University, smokers are more likely than non-smokers to have complications and worse hearing after surgery to correct chronic problems in their middle ear.

A review of medical records of more than 1,100 people who had surgery to fix chronic ear problems at the Otology Group of Vanderbilt in Nashville from 1990 to 2005, with an age range from 1-83.

63 percent were non-smokers, 21 per cent were current smokers, 5 per cent were former smokers, and smoking status wasn't available for the remaining 11 per cent of the group.

Tobacco can irritate the ears, and the new study suggests that surgery doesn't totally erase those problems.

After ear surgery, current smokers had worse overall hearing but research shows that giving up smoking and staying smokefree for five years erased the differences.

"The hearing results and outcomes return to the same as non-smokers after five years of smoking cessation," write the researchers.

Their findings were presented today in Washington at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery.