Mid-term outcomes of a smoking cessation program in hospitalized patients in Türkiye

'Teachable moments', such as inpatient treatment periods, can be turned into opportunities for smokers to acquire healthy living behaviors. This study was conducted to evaluate the outcomes of smoking cessation interventions in an inpatient hospital setting.

Data were collected for this single-arm prospective intervention cohort study between October 2021 and March 2022 from hospitalized patients at Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University Training and Research Hospital in Türkiye. Smoker patients received smoking cessation counseling and brief smoking cessation interventions during their hospitalization and were informed about how to apply to our hospital's smoking cessation outpatient clinic after discharge. They were followed via phone on the 3rd, 5th, and 7th day and the 1st, 3rd, 6th, and 12th month after their discharge, regarding their quit status as well as admissions to smoking cessation clinics. Quitters were confirmed by exhaled air carbon monoxide testing. Logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate the presence of admission to the emergency department and family physicians at follow-up at 1st year. The model was adjusted in terms of age, sex, presence of malignancy, and education level.

Of the 183 patients included in the study, 163 participants completed periodic follow-up during one year, with quit rate of 47.2%. The rate of anxiety was higher among non-quitters compared to quitters (9.4% vs 1.2%) (p=0.024). Non-quitters were 19 times more likely to have emergency department admissions (AOR=19.64; 95% CI: 8.08-47.68) and eight times more likely to have family doctor visits (AOR=8.43; 95% CI: 4.05-17.53) than quitters.

This cessation program evaluated the quit rates of hospitalized patients in the first year and revealed that the rate of anxiety was higher in non-quitters compared to quitters. It would be an important approach to include psychiatric support in this practice.