Three men sustained broken jaws at the weekend when they stepped outside pubs in Sligo, Kilkenny and Dublin to smoke.
The surgeon who treated them said yesterday he hoped "this dreadful statistic" would not continue to be replicated as the smoking ban is enforced.
Mr Cliff Beirne, consultant maxillofacial surgeon at St James's Hospital, Dublin, said the men were among six treated at his unit, the national referral centre for such injuries, on Monday morning.
He said six was not an unusual number of patients to be seen with broken jaws on a Monday morning but "alarm bells" started ringing when three of them said they had been assaulted after leaving a pub to smoke.
"I thought if I draw attention to it and it stops people having their jaws broken, or worse, over the bank holiday weekend it might be worthwhile," he said.
"How significant this is I do not know, and of course it could possibly have more to do with alcohol than smoking but the point is this is another public order problem and it's almost sickening to see the carnage here every Monday morning as a result of public order over the weekend. We can have up to 20 facial fractures on a Monday morning, mostly as a result of assaults, mostly among young men, and there would be a significant correlation with alcohol consumption," he added.
Mr Beirne, who raised his concerns in a letter to yesterday's Irish Times, said he fully supports the smoking ban but said presentations at his clinic would have to be monitored to see if any trend emerged.
But Mr David Ryan, consultant in oral and maxillofacial surgery at the Mater Hospital and Dublin Dental Hospital, said he didn't feel one could extrapolate from a study of just six cases and conclude that this was a significant event. "I would think it has more to do with drinking than smoking," he said.
He said the vast majority of the facial injuries he sees have occurred as a result of personal assaults, the majority of them drink-related.
A spokeswoman for Prof Duncan Sleeman, consultant in oral and maxillofacial surgery at Cork University Dental School and Hospital said he saw four facial fractures after the weekend but none were related to the smoking ban.
Limerick Regional Hospital also said it had not seen any additional patients with facial injuries since the ban was introduced.