Published 29 April 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1730
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1730

Letters

Nicotine replacement therapy

Nicotine replacement, effective?

The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below.

The conclusions of Moore and colleagues about nicotine replacement therapy seem to be slanted.¹ With a long term smoking cessation percentage of only 1.6%, you can hardly call nicotine replacement an "effective" intervention. Although the 1.6% abstinence rate is better than the 0.4% achieved with placebo, how can one call the 1.6% success rate with nicotine replacement "effective"?

The logical conclusion from this systematic review and meta-analysis is that nicotine replacement was a dismal intervention. Most smokers (98.4%) failed to achieve long term sustained abstinence with it.

I cannot think of another intervention for which a 98.4% failure rate would be considered a success.

Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1730

¹ Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02118, USA

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Competing interests: None declared.

1. Moore D, Aveyard P, Connock M, Wang D, Fry-Smith A, Barton P. Effectiveness and safety of nicotine replacement therapy assisted reduction to stop smoking: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ 2009;338:b1024. (2 April.)[Abstract/Free Full Text]

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This article has been cited by other articles:

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