Abstract

PONCIANO-RODRIGUEZ, Guadalupe  and  MORALES-RUIZ, América. Evaluation of the Smoking Cessation Program at the National University of Mexico School of Medicine. Salud pública Méx [online]. 2007, vol.49, suppl.2, pp.s247-s256. ISSN 0036-3634.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the smoking cessation program, including drug therapy and behavior modification, developed at the School of Medicine- National University of Mexico. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In this retrospective study, we reviewed the clinical records of all the patients who attended the Tobacco Cessation Clinic from May 2001 to December 2006. We obtained demographic and tobacco related information. The treatment, both individual or group therapy, is composed by ten weekly sessions. Abstinence reported by the patient was confirmed with the determination of urinary cotinine. Results were analized in the total population and dividing it into groups: people working or studying at the University, by gender, and by type of therapy through univariate and multivariate analysis. RESULTS: We included 565 smokers (314 women and 252 men), with a mean age of 45.5 ± 11.3 years. At the end of ten weeks of treatment, the rates of smoking cessation were 82.3% for those who received group therapy and 70.4% for individual therapy, p<0.05. Continuous abstinence rates at one and three years after the treatment were 69% and 43%, respectively. Smoking cessation rate in women was 77.6% and 84.9% in men, p<0.05. CONCLUSIONS: The cessation rate found in this study (80.9% at week 10) and a continuous abstinence of 43% after three years are high. The results suggest that men have a better response than women not only to pharmacotherapy but also to behavioral intervention, and that group therapy has a greater success than individual therapy, in terms of smoking cessation. The impact of this type of cessation programs may be very important, since they are designed to attend heavy smokers who are in greater risk of dying and of developing diseases related to tobacco smoking.

Keywords : smoking cessation program; abstinence; nicotine; bupropion; cotinine; Mexico.

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