Easier to quit smoking after a heart attack if there is a hospital-based stop smoking program

Researchers in the U.S. say they have found that hospital-based stop smoking programs initiated after a heart attack have more chance of success.

The researchers at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta say hospital-based smoking cessation programs, along with referrals to cardiac rehabilitation, appear to increased the rates of quitting smoking following a heart attack.

The researchers carried out a study of 639 patients who smoked at the time of their hospitalisation for heart attack and found that six months later, 297 of the patients, approximately 47% of them, had quit smoking.

The researchers say the odds of quitting were greater among patients who received discharge recommendations for cardiac rehabilitation and those who were treated at a facility offering an inpatient smoking cessation program, whereas individual counseling was not associated with quit rates.

Dr. Susmita Parashar, a cardiologist at Emory says the findings are important because cardiac rehabilitation and hospital-based smoking cessation programs appear to be under-utilized in current clinical practice and should be considered as a structural measure of health care quality for patients who have had a heart attack.

The report appears in the current issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.