Rasmussen-Torvik LJ, et al. - Researchers examined if smokers differ from non-smokers regarding the association between bariatric surgery and mortality. Conducting a retrospective cohort study in a large Israeli integrated payer/provider health care organization, they selected 7747 adult patients who underwent bariatric surgery and compared these with non-surgical patients (and were matched on age, sex, diabetes, and BMI using a sequential/simultaneous stratification matching). For this study, they included a total of 30,742 patients with a median follow-up of 4.3 years with less than 1% lost to follow-up. Using electronic health records, they determined the type of bariatric surgery (gastric banding, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, or sleeve gastrectomy) and smoking status. Both smoking and non-smoking subgroups displayed a statistically significantly higher mortality associated with not having bariatric surgery. They noted significantly lower mortality in both smokers and non-smokers in correlation with bariatric surgery.