Treatment of cigarette dependency. What American pulmonary physicians do

Physician advice and counseling can significantly help patients stop smoking. Consequently, we surveyed 588 of 2,207 actively practicing American pulmonary clinicians attending the 1983 Annual Meeting of the American Thoracic Society to determine what they did to help their patients stop smoking. Ninety-nine and one tenth percent of those pulmonary internists who had never smoked recorded the smoking habits of their patients and 100% advised smokers to stop. In contrast, pulmonary internists who themselves smoked cigarettes were significantly less inclined to do these two things; 84.6% and 92.3%, respectively (p less than 0.01). There was also a trend for more never smoking internists to provide additional services to patients wishing to stop smoking. Of the pulmonary internists, 86.8% wanted to learn new techniques to help their patients stop smoking. Essentially, 75% of the small sample of pediatric pulmonary specialists surveyed felt that determining whether their patients smoked or not and providing services to help them stop smoking was "not applicable" to their practice.