The Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 mandated that all cigarette packages carry a warning: "Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health." Nearly 20 years later, Congress passed the Comprehensive Smoking Education Act, which specified that the warning labels include specific health risks, including lung cancer. Then, in 1985, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act directed that warning labels include graphic depictions of the dangers of smoking.
The legislation mandating that cigarette manufacturers use warning labels demonstrates that we have known the dangers of smoking for decades. In addition, the American Cancer Society and other organizations recommend tobacco cessation programs for patients with cancer who smoke. However, time and resource constraints often prevent the implementation of cessation programs in routine oncology care.
Because we have yet to achieve widespread implementation of smoking cessation programs for cancer survivors, we lack a complete understanding of the long-term benefits and outcomes for patients who quit smoking after diagnosis. A team of researchers set out to address these questions, and they recently published their findings in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
The study asked an important question about how smoking cessation impacts overall survival (OS) in cancer survivors who smoke, across all disease stages. The researchers collected data from over 13,000 cancer patients, and they followed the participants who smoked for six months to assess their smoking cessation.
Approximately half (49.5%) of the patients never smoked. On the other hand, 13% and 37.6% self-reported themselves as current smokers or past smokers, respectively. Both current and past smokers had an increased risk of mortality compared to never smokers.
Of the 1,725 patients who smoked currently, 22.1% (381 individuals) quit smoking within 6 months. Those who quit smoking had a significantly lower risk of mortality compared to the individuals who continued to smoke. Importantly, the benefits of smoking cessation were not limited to early-stage cancer patients but extended even to those with advanced stage (III or IV) disease. This shows that regardless of the stage of cancer, smoking cessation can significantly improve patient outcomes, instilling confidence in the potential of cessation programs.
The study shows that smoking cessation after cancer diagnosis improves OS for cancer patients, including those with advanced cancer diagnoses. These findings underscore the importance of providing all cancer patients, regardless of cancer type or stage, who smoke with evidence-based smoking cessation programs. Ensuring that these programs are readily available and effectively implemented could have a significant impact of survival following cancer diagnosis. Successfully helping cancer survivors quit smoking can have a significant impact on survivorship, and this should serve as a powerful motivator for our continued efforts in this area.
Sources: J Natl Compr Canc Netw
