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Program Helps Heart Patients Kick Habit

Posted on: Monday, 12 February 2007, 21:00 CST

An intensive, structured smoking-cessation program at a Nebraska hospital helped heart patients quit smoking for at least two years.

Syed Mohiuddin and colleagues at the Creighton University Cardiac Center in Omaha said that, at the end of two years, 39 percent of heart patients in the intensive program's treatment group had not smoked since their hospital admission, compared to 9 percent of heart patients in a usual-care group.

The researchers randomized 209 patients admitted to the coronary care unit for unstable angina, heart attack, and severe coronary heart disease to receive one of two programs: The intensive smoking-cessation program -- consisting of 30 minutes of inpatient counseling plus self-help materials, 12 weeks of behavior-modification counseling, and individualized treatment with either nicotine replacement therapy or bupropion at no cost -- or the usual-care program, which involved only the inpatient counseling and the self-help materials.

Patients were followed at 3, 6, 12 and 24 months. Aside from the widely varying success rates between the two groups, the researchers also noted that people in the control group visited the hospital twice as often as those in the treatment arm during the two-year duration of the study, and also had a mortality rate four times higher than those in the intervention program.

Smoking is the greatest risk factor for patients with heart disease, said Mohiuddin. Cessation of smoking results in an almost immediate improvement in the risk of heart attack. Our study showed that intense treatment intervention not only succeeded in getting patients to quit smoking, but it reduced hospitalizations and mortality as well.

The research was published in the February issue of the journal CHEST.

Source: United Press International

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