Effect of Cigarette Smoking on Midterm Outcomes After Arthroscopic Surgery for Femoroacetabular Impingement Syndrome: A Propensity-Matched Controlled Study With Minimum 5-Year Follow-up

BACKGROUND: There is limited literature evaluating patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in cigarette smokers undergoing hip arthroscopy for femoroacetabular impingement syndrome (FAIS) at midterm follow-up. PURPOSE: (1) To report minimum 5-year PROs for cigarette-smoking patients who underwent primary hip arthroscopy for FAIS and (2) to compare these results with a propensity-matched control group of never-smoking patients. STUDY DESIGN: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. METHODS: Data were collected for all patients who underwent primary hip arthroscopy for FAIS between June 2009 and March 2016. Patients were eligible if they indicated that they smoked cigarettes within 1 month of surgery and had minimum 5-year postoperative outcomes for the modified Harris Hip Score, Nonarthritic Hip Score, Hip Outcome Score–Sport Specific Subscale (HOS-SSS), and International Hip Outcome Tool–12 (iHOT-12). The percentages of patients achieving the Patient Acceptable Symptom State (PASS) and maximum outcome improvement satisfaction threshold were recorded. The study group was then propensity matched in a 1:2 ratio to patients who had never smoked for comparison. RESULTS: Included were 35 patients (35 hips) with a mean age of 39.4 ± 13.0 years and mean follow-up of 64.6 ± 4.1 months. These patients demonstrated significant improvement from preoperatively to a minimum 5-year follow-up for all recorded PROs (P < .05). When compared with 70 control patients (70 hips), smoking patients demonstrated significantly worse preoperative scores for all PROs (P < .05). Study patients also demonstrated worse minimum 5-year scores for all recorded PROs compared with control patients, which did not reach statistical significance but trended toward significance for HOS-SSS (70.4 vs 81.9; P = .076) and iHOT-12 (74.7 vs 82.2; P = .122). Smoking patients also trended toward lower rates of achieving PASS for the iHOT-12 compared with never-smoking patients (50.0% vs 68.2%; P = .120). CONCLUSION: Patients who smoked cigarettes and underwent primary hip arthroscopy for FAIS demonstrated significant improvement in PROs at a minimum 5-year follow-up. When compared with a propensity-matched control group of never-smokers, they trended toward lower postoperative HOS-SSS and iHOT-12 scores and lower rates of achieving PASS on the iHOT-12.