Doctors should be advising patients who smoke that they need to quit on a regular basis including during routine health checks in addition to offering counselling and medication to deal with smoking addiction, according to a new paper published today.
The paper is published as part of a series in The Lancet medical journal today which present different views on ‘controlling the global tobacco epidemic’.
Another paper strongly criticises the “massive failure” of politicians and medical practitioners to implement tobacco control measures across Europe saying that mass media campaigns are underused and provision of services for quitting are lacking.
It is estimated that there are some 120 million smokers in Europe, over a quarter of the continent’s population, with 650,000 preventable deaths from smoking ever year.
A paper by Professor Nancy Rigotti of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School says that incorporating psychological counselling with a pharmacological treatment, such as nicotine patches and chewing gum, is the most effective way for most smokers to quit.
Source: Hugh O'Connell, thejournal.ie, 03/05/2013
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