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Smoking after lung cancer diagnosis reduces survival

Patients with lung cancer who quit smoking at or after their diagnosis had better survival than patients who continued using tobacco after diagnosis, according to study results.

Katharine A. Dobson Amato, MPH, PhD, of the department of health behavior at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, and colleagues screened patients with lung cancer with a standardized tobacco assessment. The researchers then automatically referred 388 patients who had used tobacco within the previous 30 days to a telephone-based cessation service.

The cessation service called approximately 81% of the patients referred and 79.9% of those patients participated in at least one call.

At time of referral to the institute’s Tobacco Assessment and Cessation Service, 20% of patients (n = 250) self-reported having quit within the last 30 days. During time of the initial phone contact, 28.7% of patients reported having quit, including newly quit patients and those who maintained their status at referral.

The researchers noted an increase in survival associated with quitting compared with continued tobacco use at last contact (HR = 1.79; 95% CI, 1.14-2.82) with a median 9 months improvement in overall survival.

Study researcher Mary Reid, PhD, director of Cancer Screening and Survivorship at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, stressed in a press release, the importance of smoking cessation programs.

Mary Reid

“Establishing services to accurately screen for tobacco use and easily accessible cessation programs are essential in the cancer care setting to further improve the survival time and quality of life of patients,” she said. – by Ryan McDonald

Disclosure: Amato reports no relevant financial disclosures. Please see the full study for a list of all other authors’ relevant financial disclosures.