Hospital interventions help smokers to quit

BOSTON, July 18 (UPI) -- Hospitalization provides patients who smoke a "teachable moment" that greatly improves success of smoking cessation efforts, found a U.S. review.

In addition, being in a hospital -- a non-smoking environment -- adds to the success of cessation counseling, according to lead author Dr. Nancy Rigotti, director of the Tobacco Research and Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

The researchers found that when smokers become hospital patients, regardless of the reason for admission, they are receptive to efforts to help them to quit smoking after discharge and more likely succeed.

"Smokers know that smoking is harmful to a person's health, but many of them don't really believe that smoking is harmful to their own health until they get sick," Rigotti said in a statement.

"Just offering brief advice to quit, or even counseling someone for 30 minutes in the hospital is effective only if some continuing contact is provided after the smoker leaves the hospital."

The review is published in The Cochrane Library.