Better, prolonged therapy for smokers helps them kick the habit, even smokers who have no desire to quit, according to studies released Monday.
"What we found is if you treat smoking like other health conditions and diseases like high blood pressure and diabetes, you're more likely to be successful," says lead author Anne Joseph, a physician and director of the University of Minnesota's applied clinical research program. "With blood pressure, you'll give medication to get near target goals, change diet and lifestyle and keep monitoring."
Too often, physicians do not do enough to help smokers who relapse, she says. "We often view relapse as failure and need to build in interim goals until success is achieved."
Tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death in the USA, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and is to blame for about 85% of lung cancers. Though smoking has declined for several years, the trend now has been mostly flat. A September report showed nearly one in five adults (45.3 million) smoke, down 3 million from 2005.
Novel approaches are needed to help people quit, the authors conclude in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine.
Joseph's study of 443 smokers compared success rates of smokers who received standard treatment (eight weeks of counseling plus nicotine therapy) with smokers who had prolonged care (48 weeks of counseling and nicotine replacement). The prolonged-care group was about 75% more effective at quitting smoking for the long term, Joseph said. "Longer counseling and stepping in after a relapse seems to be what's better."
A study done at the University of South Carolina in Charleston examined the effectiveness of a quit-smoking intervention in 849 smokers who did not want to quit. Smokers were assigned to a therapy group attempting to quit or a therapy group attempting to quit with nicotine replacement therapy. At the final follow-up, the nicotine group had a "significantly" higher incidence of quit attempts (49% vs. 40%).
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