BMJ  2008;336:567-568 (15 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.39506.386759.80 (published 6 March 2008)

Editorials

Incentives to quit smoking in primary care

Spirometry with pictorial feedback on lung age, not just raw data, improves quit rates

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In the accompanying randomised controlled trial, Parkes and colleagues assess the effect of telling patients over 35 years of age their estimated spirometric lung age as an incentive to quit smoking.1 Support for conducting the trial comes from a recent Polish observational study on the potential association between smoking cessation and participants’ spirometry results, as communicated using Fletcher and Peto’s diagram (a pictorial representation of how smoking ages the lungs).2 The Polish study showed higher smoking cessation rates at one year in smokers with airway obstruction than in those with normal spirometric parameters. However, the study had no control group without spirometry testing or without feedback on such testing. The authors called for a large randomised controlled trial comparing the effect of providing spirometry results versus no spirometry results on smoking cessation.

In Parkes and colleagues’ trial, participants in the intervention group received comprehensive information about their spirometry results including . . . [Full text of this article]

Raphaël Bize, senior research fellow, Jacques Cornuz, associate professor

1 Department of Ambulatory Care and Community Medicine, University of Lausanne, Switzerland

raphael.bize@hospvd.ch


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Effect on smoking quit rate of telling patients their lung age: the Step2quit randomised controlled trial
Gary Parkes, Trisha Greenhalgh, Mark Griffin, and Richard Dent
BMJ 2008 336: 598-600. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

Need to develop behavior module based on lung age
Om Prakash
bmj.com, 17 Mar 2008 [Full text]
Smokers Lung
Gerald G Spence
bmj.com, 19 Mar 2008 [Full text]
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ