Both tobacco smoke and nicotine itself have severe adverse effects on recovery after surgery.
These harmful effects occur in all types of surgeries, but they are especially dramatic when we talk about plastic surgery, due to the high concentration of blood vessels in the skin.
It has been shown that nicotine is responsible for the narrowing of blood vessels. Due to this fact, tissues have more difficulty in receiving oxygen from the blood and recovery becomes more complicated. In the absence of oxygen, the tissues can necrotize and die.