HYDERABAD: There’s more bad news for smokers. It’s not only the lungs and heart that are affected by their habit, but the kidneys too. According to a new study by a city-based hospital, smokers form a significant number of heart patients with kidney problems. More significantly, the risk of kidney failure after a bypass surgery is high among smokers.The study, published in the December issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, a leading and official journal of thoracic surgeons in the USA, found that a majority of patients who underwent heart bypass surgery had developed renal problems too (80 pc), and smokers constituted a significant 14.4 percent of them.Another finding is that among the bypass patients, only 18 percent did not report any kidney problem and among them the smokers' percentage was just 8, implying that 92 percent of heart patients with normal kidney functioning are non-smokers.“This shows a direct link between smoking and kidney problems,” says Dr Sajja Lokeswara Rao of Star Hospitals, a member of the team of doctors that did the study, which is one of the first analysing the effect of pre-operative kidney problem on the results of a bypass surgery through the ‘beating heart' method.Another grim fact for smokers is that the kidney problem that existed before a bypass surgery can worsen after the surgery. “If the need for dialysis after a heart surgery is taken as the indicator of the severity of kidney problem, then the study found that the need arose more for smokers,” says Dr Mannam Gopichand, study group member and managing director of Star Hospitals.In heart patients with a moderate kidney problem, 2.6 percent needed dialysis after a bypass and most of them were smokers, said the study conducted on a group of 2,275 who underwent bypass surgery.
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