Abstract

Background and aim: There is a small number of smoking cessation studies in the literature that examines smokers aged ≥50 years. In this study we aimed to evaluate our smoking cessation experience on that age group.

Methods: Among 545 patient who have admitted to our smoking cessation outpatient clinic between 1 April 2015 and 30 June 2016, 143 patients (26.2%) that are ≥50 years old were included to the study. The study population were called by phone at the sixth month of their first visit and data was analysed for 119 patients (83.2%) that were reached. Their treatment adherence, advers reactions and current smoking status were learned from telephone visit. Patients were evaluated according to their treatment adherence and cessation success.

Results: Totally data of 119 patients were evaluated, mean age of them were 60.0±6.81, 72.3% of them were between 50-64 years.  Mean duration of medication use was 19.1±15.7 days. According to their medication use duration only 38.7% of them have treatment adherence (≥30 days medication use).At their sixth month of first visit 46.2% of them have quit smoking. Treatment adherence of patients who had used vareniclin was higher than the other groups (62.5%) (p=0.042). The effect of independent variables on cessation success were evaluated with ‘Logistic regression backward:LR test’ and the group with treatment adherence has 5,89 (%95 CI; 2,61-13,28) times more cessation success rate than the other group. 

Conclusion: This study showed that treatment adherence is the most important factor that effects cessation success, however, most of the patients have unfortunately recorded treatment non-adherence.