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Background:
It is well established that smoking has a myriad of negative effects on varies aspects of bodily health. Amongst them, also lasting adverse effects on postoperative outcome have been identified.

Objective:
Aim of this study was to examine the effects of smoking on the postoperative subjective pain course and health related quality of life (HRQoL) until 1 year after surgery for herniated lumbar disc (LDH).

Results:
- Smoking and nonsmoking patients profited equally from surgery as measured by SF-12 MCS and PCS improvement and VAS pain scale
- From a unvariate and multivariate perspective smoking did not predict the 1-year SF-12 MCS or PCS responder status. On the MCS metric, smokers were 111% as likely as nonsmokers to achieve a favourable HrQoL response and on the PCS metric, smokers were 118% as likely to achieve a favourable HrQoL response to surgery

Conclusions:
The present study results could not confirm the hypothesis that smoking was associated with worse outcome after surgery for LDH. If smoking did negatively affect the postoperative HrQOL after surgery for LDH, the effect size would have been rather small according to our data.

Conflict of interest / funding:
The authors declare no conflicts of interest. There was no funding received for this study.