Category: Smoking

Cancer

Many Patients Continue to Smoke Even After Being Diagnosed With Cancer

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Commercial for the California Dept of Health Services

Unbelievable, isn’t it?

A new analysis has found that a substantial number of lung and colorectal cancer patients continue to smoke after being diagnosed. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study provides valuable information on which cancer patients might need help to quit smoking.

When a patient receives a cancer diagnosis, the main focus is to treat the disease. But stopping smoking after a cancer diagnosis is also important because continuing to smoke can negatively affect patients’ responses to treatments, their subsequent cancer risk, and, potentially, their survival. Elyse R. Park, PhD, MPH, of the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston, led a team that looked to see how many patients quit smoking around the time of a cancer diagnosis, and which smokers were most likely to quit.

The investigators determined smoking rates around the time of diagnosis and five months after diagnosis in 5,338 lung and colorectal cancer patients. At diagnosis, 39 percent of lung cancer patients and 14 percent of colorectal cancer patients were smoking; five months later, 14 percent of lung cancer patients and 9 percent of colorectal cancer patients were still smoking. These results indicate that a substantial minority of cancer patients continue to smoke after being diagnosed. Also, although lung cancer patients have higher rates of smoking at diagnosis and following diagnosis, colorectal cancer patients are less likely to quit smoking following diagnosis.

Obviously, some patients, even after having cancer, have a hard time breaking the addictive cycle of nicotine.

Physicians and dentists must develop strategies to help these patients quit and quit for good.

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Health

For Smokers Seeing Arterial Plaque Makes No Difference on Whether They Quit Smoking

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Coronary artery plaque in the heart

Unbelievable, I mean really?

If you were a smoker, would seeing an image of plaque building up in your neck artery help you quit?

That was the central question posed by a study of 536 smokers recently published online by the Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers wanted to know whether using ultrasound images of the carotid artery could serve as a “teachable moment” and improve quit rates when added to an intensive smoking-cessation program.

Plaques in the carotid are a predictor of cardiovascular disease risk, explains Nicolas Rodondi, a professor at the University Hospital Inselspital, in Bern, Switzerland, and an author of the study. But screening for the plaques has been controversial, because it’s not clear whether it actually improves health.

The smokers — who were between 40 and 70 years of age and smoked an average of a pack a day — were randomized into two groups. One received carotid plaque screening, and the other didn’t. Both then participated in a one-year smoking cessation program that included six 20-minute individual counseling sessions and nicotine replacement therapy.

At the end of the year, the researchers got a surprise: the quit rates were high, but there was no significant difference between the groups (24.9% in the screening group and 22.1% in the non-screening group). Nor was there a difference in quit rates between the screened folks who had and did not have plaques.

Maybe this communication was not sufficient of a “teachable” moment. Or, maybe these folks were motivated to quit smoking, in any case.

Do smokers really need to be scared? Or, do physicians and dentists need better communication tools?

I would say the latter.

Watch the video below and weigh in with your thoughts in the comments section.

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Health

Is There Quality of Life After Cigarettes?

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You betcha, there is.

Life without cigarettes is not all doom and gloom. In fact, successful quitters are more satisfied with their lives and feel healthier, both one year and three years afterwards, than those who continue to smoke. That’s according to new research by Dr. Megan Piper, from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in the US, and her team. Their work, which looks at whether quitting smoking can improve psychological well-being, is published online in Springer’s journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

It may be tough to quit, but it certainly pays health dividends.

The authors conclude: “This research provides substantial evidence that quitting smoking benefits well-being compared to continuing smoking. Smokers might believe that quitting will decrease life satisfaction or quality of life — because they believe it disrupts routines, interferes with relationships, leads to a loss of smoking-related pleasure, or because cessation deprives them of a coping strategy. Our findings suggest that, over the long-term, individuals will be happier and more satisfied with their lives if they stop smoking than if they do not.”

So, go ahead and quit. Improve your health, the health of others around you and your quality of life.

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Cancer

In Women, Smoking is Closely Associated With Squamous Cell Carcinoma

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According to a new study.

Women who have non-melanoma skin cancers are more likely to have smoked cigarettes compared to women without skin cancer, said researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., who published study results in a recent issue of Cancer Causes Control.

The researchers concluded that:

  •     Cigarette smoking was associated with non-melanoma skin cancer, and the risk increased with increasing dose (cigarettes per day) and number of years smoked.
  •     Among men, smoking was modestly associated with BCC andSCC.
  •     Among women, smoking was strongly associated with SCC, but not BCC.

So, if you don’t smoke, don’t start.

If you do smoke, cut back and then quit….

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Health

Are Smoking Interventions and Nicotine Replacement Treatments Effective Ways for Smokers to Quit

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Yes, according to a couple of new studies.

Nicotine replacement therapy and smoking cessation intervention programs are associated with positive outcomes among current smokers, according to two studies in the November 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

“In summary, providing brief NT sampling to smokers who do not want to quit, when used within a behavioral exercise of a PQA, is efficacious to motivate unmotivated smokers toward quitting,” the authors conclude. “Considering the stagnant incidence of quit attempts in the past decade, this novel and easy-to-use cessation induction strategy holds promise for translation to primary care settings.”

“This randomized controlled trial shows that a smoking intervention based on chronic disease management principles of care — targeting the goal of quitting smoking but incorporating failures, setting interim goals and continuing care until the desired outcome is achieved — is approximately 75 percent more effective at accomplishing long-term abstinence than delivery of a discrete episode of care for smoking cessation,” the authors conclude.

And, why is quitting so important?

Compared with current smokers, risk of death was significantly reduced among past smokers within 10 years of quitting. By 20 years after quitting, the risk was further reduced, to the level of never smokers. Although current heavy smokers had the highest risk of death compared with current light and past smokers, the risk of death could be reduced by 44 percent for this group within 10 years of quitting and reach a similar risk as never smokers after more than 20 years.

So, I will beat the drum again: If you don’t smoke, don’t start. If you do smoke, please quit.

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