Increasing smoking cessation care in a preoperative clinic: a randomized controlled trial

Evidence suggests that preoperative clinics, like other hospital outpatient clinics and inpatient wards, fail to systematically provide smoking cessation care to patients having planned surgery.

The aim of the study was to assess the efficacy, acceptability, and cost of a multifaceted intervention to facilitate the provision of comprehensive smoking cessation care to patients attending a preoperative clinic. Two hundred ten smoking patients attending a preoperative clinic at a major teaching hospital in Australia took part in the study. One hundred twenty-four patients were randomly assigned to an experimental group and 86 patients to a usual cessation care group. A multifaceted intervention was developed that included the use of opinion leaders, consensus processes, computer-delivered cessation care, computer-generated prompts for care provision by clinic staff, staff training, and performance feedback.

Ninety-six percent of experimental group patients received behavioral counseling and tailored self-help material. Experimental group patients were significantly more likely than usual care patients to report receiving brief advice by nursing (79% vs. 47%; P < 0.01) and anaesthetic (60% vs. 39%; P < 0.01) staff. Experimental group patients who were nicotine dependent were also more likely to be offered preoperative nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) (82% vs. 8%; P < 0.01) and be prescribed postoperative NRT (86% vs. 0%; P < 0.01). The multifaceted intervention was found to be acceptable by staff.

A multifaceted clinical practice change intervention may be effective in improving the delivery of smoking cessation care to preoperative surgical patients.