A GRAPHIC, 30-second advertisement showing a surgeon preparing to amputate a gangrenous foot is the latest weapon in the battle to make smokers quit.

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The advertisement, which will be launched on national television tonight, seeks to revive the element of shock in the campaign by focusing on a consequence few people associate with cigarettes — gangrene.

Smokers are 2 times more likely to develop peripheral vascular disease, a blockage of the arteries in the legs and arms which can cause the infection. In the most severe cases, amputation is the only option.

About 800 Victorians are diagnosed with peripheral vascular disease every year . It usually affects older people, but vascular surgeon Mark Westcott said some smokers in their 30s had been affected and had major amputations. “It’s a bit despairing when there is nothing more that can be done,” he said.

For Fotios Tsigaridis, 78, the campaign comes too late. A father of three and former railway labourer, Mr Tsigaridis learned the brutal lesson some 13 years ago when, after 50 years of smoking, he developed gangrene in his right leg and had to have it amputated.

With a prosthetic limb and two walking sticks, Mr Tsigaridis, whose name means cigarettes in Greek, can walk short distances but do little more on his own.

In the past five years, more than 1500 amputations have been performed in Victoria. Of the 125 patients who had major amputations at St Vincent’s Hospital in that time, 100 were current or former smokers. Yet a recent survey showed that almost 75 per cent of smokers did not accept that smoking could cause gangrene.

Source: The Age