Effect of a "stop smoking" booklet on smokers attending for chest radiography: a controlled study

At two chest clinics 1206 cigarette smokers referred by their general practitioners for chest radiography only either were dealt with in the normal way or in addition were given a How to Stop Smoking booklet by the clinic receptionist or nurse. Follow up one year later showed that 3.2% of all patients had successfully given up smoking, older patients doing better than younger ones and men doing better than women. Overall 3.9% of the group receiving a booklet were successful compared with 2.7% of the controls (p = 0.14). At one clinic the groups were not well matched for age but at the other, where there was no such imbalance, there was a suggestion that the booklet group did better than the controls (6.5% v 2.7% success), although the difference did not achieve conventional statistical significance (p = 0.09). If this can be confirmed as a real effect then this cheap, simple strategy could easily be applied on a large scale.