Government releases updated guidelines for smoking cessation
ROCKVILLE, Md. An updated clinical practice guideline released Wednesday by the U.S. Public Health Service has identified new counseling and medication treatments that are effective for helping people quit smoking, including Pfizer’s Chantix, which updated the warning label of its non-nicotine smoking cessation to include the fact that patients may experience “serious neuropsychiatric symptoms,” including suicidal behavior, in January.
Rather than stress any one smoking cessation treatment, however, the guidelines underscore the clinical efficacy in combining treatment with counseling.
In addition, the May 7 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association includes a commentary that urges clinicians to use the updated guideline to accelerate progress in reducing the use of tobacco, the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality released in a statement.
“Decades after the hazards of smoking first gained national attention, tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of illness and death in our society,” stated Rear Adm. Steven Galson, Acting Surgeon General. “The good news is that we now have some of the best evidence-based treatments available for tobacco cessation.”
Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence: 2008 Update was developed by a 24-member, private-sector panel of leading national tobacco treatment experts that reviewed more than 8,700 research articles published between 1975 and 2007. The review found that there are now seven medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration as smoking cessation treatments that dramatically increase the success of quitting. The medications are: bupropion SR (Wellbutrin, Zyban), nicotine gum, nicotine inhaler, nicotine lozenge, nicotine nasal spray, nicotine patch and varenicline (Chantix).
The 2008 PHS guideline update also found evidence that counseling by itself or especially in conjunction with medication can greatly increase a person’s success in quitting. In particular, quitlines were found to be effective and can reach a large number of people; 1-800-QUIT-NOW, a national quitline, is an access number that connects people to their state-based quitline. It also provides broad access to cessation counseling for diverse populations and is easy for clinicians and patients to use.
“Tobacco dependence is a chronic condition that often requires repeated intervention that can lead to long-term abstinence,” commented Michael Fiore, guideline update panel chair and director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “I urge all clinicians to offer these effective treatments to smokers, no matter what their past success, and health care systems to make treatment a standard of care,” he said.
American Medical Association President Ronald Davis, supported that call to action for clinicians. “With nearly half a million Americans dying from tobacco-related illness each year, what we do with today’s recommendations can help to dramatically reduce the estimated 5 million smokers who will die over the next decade if we don’t help treat them.”