Attempting Tobacco Cessation - An Oral Physician’s Perspective

Abstract

<br/><b>Introduction</b>: Tobacco use is a global health care problem. Repetitive exposure to nicotine producesneuroadaptation resulting in nicotine dependence. Smoking is associated with a range of diseases, causing highlevels of morbidity and mortality and is one of the leading causes of preventable deaths, with more than 4.6million smokers worldwide dying each year from smoking related illnesses. Stopping smoking has major healthbenefits. Quitting at any age provides both short and long term benefits. Materials and methods: 45 patientsattending the outpatient department at the Oxford Dental College, Bangalore, were randomly allocated to threegroups of interventions namely placebo, counseling and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). Initially each onewas assessed for carbon monoxide levels using a breath analyser (pico smokerlyser bedfont UK). They werefollowed up for six months and the carbon monoxide levels were again assessed using the same instrument.The paired t test was used to compare the results before and after the intervention. <br/><b>Results</b>: The scores beforethe initiation of intervention and after treatment were compared and all three interventions were found to bestatistically significant after six months. It was noticed that patients with very low or low dependence followedby high dependence had good response in the placebo group (68% and 47.6% respectively), in the counselinggroup maximum response was seen in the medium followed by the very low group (61% and 59% respectively),and maximum response was seen in very high followed by the very low group with NRT (78.7% and 60.5%respectively). <br/><b>Conclusion</b>: The inference that can be drawn from the present study is that non-invasive, nonpharmacological methods like placebo and counseling are effective in low to medium groups, and NRT is effectivewith higher nicotine dependence.