Intensive smoking cessation helps heart patients
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Even smokers who’ve already suffered serious heart problems can improve their outlook by quitting, researchers reported Monday.
In a study of more than 200 smokers hospitalized for heart problems, investigators found that intensive smoking-cessation therapy not only helped patients kick the habit, but also lowered their risk of dying over the next 2 years.
The intensive therapy, which lasted at least 3 months, was significantly more effective than “usual” care—in this case, a short counseling session and written advice on smoking cessation.
“Smoking is the greatest risk factor for patients with heart disease,” lead study author Dr. Syed M. Mohiuddin said in a statement, “and our study showed that intense treatment intervention not only succeeded in getting patients to quit smoking, but it reduced hospitalizations and mortality, as well.”
In fact, the findings suggest that for smokers with heart disease, quitting could be the most effective way of preventing complications, according to Mohiuddin and his colleagues at Creighton University Cardiac Center in Omaha, Nebraska.
They report the results in the medical journal Chest.
The researchers based their findings on 209 men and women hospitalized for heart attack, chest pain (angina) or heart failure. All of the patients smoked, but agreed to start cessation efforts right away.
The patients were given a short counseling session while still in the hospital, as well as written self-help materials to take home. Half of them then continued with intensive therapy, meeting with a counselor once a week for at least 3 months and taking a nicotine replacement product or bupropion, a prescription drug used to aid smoking cessation.
Of patients in the intensive-therapy group, more than two thirds quit for some amount of time, though only one third managed to stay abstinent for the next 2 years. Only 9 percent of patients in the standard therapy group were still abstinent after 2 years.
More importantly, the researchers found that the higher quit rates translated into better heart health. Of patients in the intensive-therapy group, 23 percent were rehospitalized during the study period, versus 41 percent of the usual-care group. And the death rate in the intervention group was only 3 percent, versus 12 percent in the usual-care group.
“Cessation of smoking results in an almost immediate improvement in the risk of heart attack,” Mohiuddin said, “and our study proves that intense smoking cessation treatment in high-risk patients is successful and that it saves lives.”
SOURCE: Chest, February 2007.
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