Telephone counselling for smoking cessation

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Behavioral Science
• Tobacco Control

Background:

• Telephone services offer vital information and support for smoking cessation.
• Counselling can be delivered proactively or reactively through smoking cessation helplines.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of telephone support for smoking cessation.
• To assess proactive and reactive counselling, and information provision via helplines.

Main Methods:

• Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized and quasi-randomized controlled trials.
• Searched multiple databases including Cochrane, clinicaltrials.gov, and ICTRP.
• Analyzed 104 trials with 111,653 participants, assessing risk of bias and heterogeneity.

Main Results:

• Proactive telephone counselling significantly increased quit rates for helpline users (RR 1.38) and non-helpline callers (RR 1.25).
• Evidence certainty was downgraded to moderate due to unexplained heterogeneity.
• Effectiveness was greater when telephone counselling was adjunct to self-help or brief interventions, and for motivated quitters.

Conclusions:

• Moderate-certainty evidence supports proactive telephone counselling for smoking cessation in quitline users and other settings.
• Insufficient evidence exists to determine optimal contact frequency, type, or timing.
• The effect of reactive telephone counselling remains inconclusive due to limited studies.