Prognosis in a smoking cessation program

In an attempt to develop a heuristic model of outcome in smoking cessation programs, pretreatment measures of smoking behavior, smoking severity, chronicity of smoking, addictive liability, and health functioning were utilized in order to predict outcome on the number of cigarettes smoked and carbon monoxide (CO) levels at 6-month follow-up. The results of multiple regression analyses supported the view that addictive liability, as indicated by high nicotine ingestion, contributed to higher levels of smoking on follow-up. Poor health status also predicted higher smoking levels on follow-up, as did pretreatment measures of the number of cigarettes smoked per day. However, measures of smoking severity (carbon monoxide and thiocyanate levels) at pretreatment were negatively related to smoking behavior on follow-up. The number of years of smoking history was negatively related to smoking behavior on follow-up. These results need to be cross-validated with larger samples, but the results suggest that prognosis in smoking cessation is worsened by addictive liability and poor health, but not by severe levels of smoking behavior or chronicity in smoking.