Helping patients with Crohn's disease quit smoking

Smoking is not only a risk factor for Crohn's disease, but ongoing smoking is associated with a poorer disease course. Therefore, smoking cessation should be an important treatment strategy for Crohn's disease patients who smoke tobacco. Recent improvements in understanding how people quit smoking and the development of pharmacological interventions, such as nicotine patches and bupropion, have improved cessation rates. In this article, we first briefly review the evidence supporting the adverse effects of smoking on the disease course. We next review the current understanding of how people change addictive behaviors, such as smoking. We then describe how the gastroenterologist can aid the patient with Crohn's disease to quit smoking, including appropriate and brief counseling strategies and the use of adjunctive treatments. Given the improvements in smoking cessation strategies, all patients with Crohn's disease should be strongly advised to quit smoking and be aided in doing so.