[The practice guideline: 'Treatment of tobacco dependence']

The interdisciplinary guideline 'Treatment of tobacco dependence' discusses the approach to smoking patients. The point of departure is the concept that smoking is an addiction and that its treatment should be based on this fact. The effectiveness of treatment depends on the patient's motivation to stop smoking and on the intensity of the intervention. Pharmacotherapy may be of added value here, particularly for persistent smokers. The guideline aims at reaching as many smoking patients as possible, regardless of whether there is a relationship between their symptoms or ill health and smoking. Practitioners should ask about smoking habits regularly and smokers should be advised at least once to stop. Further treatment and guidance aims in particular to increase the motivation to quit and at those who are prepared to stop on the basis of the stages-of-change model. More intensive possibilities for treatment, by both general practitioners and specialists, are needed for persistent smokers. Such facilities are hardly available at all in The Netherlands at present, but will have to be developed to make the cost-effective treatment of tobacco addiction possible on a large scale.