Aim To examine the effectiveness of a stage-matched smoking cessation counselling intervention for smokers who had cardiac diseases
Methods 1860 Chinese cardiac patients who smoked at least 1 cigarette in the past 7 days and aged 18 or above recruited from cardiac outpatient clinics of Hong Kong hospitals were randomly allocated to an intervention or control group. The intervention group (n = 938) received counselling matched with their stage of readiness to quit by trained-counsellors at baseline, 1-week, and 1-month. The control group (n = 922) received a brief counselling on healthy diet at baseline.
The primary outcomes were self-reported 7-day and 30-day point prevalence (PP) of tobacco abstinence at 12-month after baseline. The secondary outcome measures included biochemically validated abstinence at 12-month follow up, self-reported 7-day and 30-day PP abstinence, and reduction of cigarette consumption by 50% at 3- and 6-month.
Results By intention-to-treat analysis, the intervention and control group had no significant difference in self-reported 7-day PP abstinence (Adj. OR = 0.95, 95%CI = 0.77 to 1.18) and 30-day PP (Adj OR = 0.96, 95%CI = 0.77 to 1.19), biochemically validated abstinence (Adj. OR = 1.26, 95%CI = 0.85 to 1.87), and overall quit-attempts of least 24 hours (Adj OR = 1.18, 95%CI = 0.97 to 1.43) at the 12-month follow up, adjusted for the baseline stage of readiness to quit smoking.
Conclusions An intervention, based on the Stages of Change model, to promote smoking cessation in cardiac patients in China failed to find any long-term benefit.