Cigarette cessation prediction based on Fagerstrom

Introduction: Smoking is considered as the first preventable cause of mortality worldwide. Smoking cessation is influenced by many factors including social, familial and individual aspects. High nicotine dependency is a remarkable cause that makes cessation laborious for the smoker. There are many modalities to estimate the rate of nicotine dependency in practice among which Fagerstrom test is one of the most suitable, practical and noninvasive ways. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study. Data was obtained by questionnaire from all smokers who had participated in teaching-healing courses of Tehran smoking cessation clinic during 2001-2003. Nicotine dependency rate was evaluated via Fagerstrom test. Cessation was investigated by subject's declaration of nonsmoking after the third session of the course, then it was confirmed by measuring the expiratory carbon monoxide titer. Data was analyzed by SPSS software using T-test and Chi-Square test. Results: There were 987 entrants in the study in which 786 persons (79.9%) were male. Evaluation of nicotine dependency rate showed that more than half (544 persons, 52%) of the smokers had moderate dependency and 112 smokers (11.4%) had low dependency. The success rate in cessation at the end of the course was 89.6% (642 persons) which was obtained by subtracting the eliminated group. Correlation of cessation results at the end of course with nicotine depended rate (Fagerstrom test) in participants reveals that there are three states: Success, Failure and discontinuation of survey. The maximum rate of success in cessation was among the smokers with low nicotine dependency (79 persons, 70.5%) and the minimum one belongs to smokers with high nicotine dependency (323 persons, 59.4%) (P<0.001). Conclusion: It seems that smokers with high nicotine dependency had a poor opportunity to become successful. Hence it is recommended to draw special attention to hold particular courses with longer duration and multi-drug therapy for cessation of patients with high dependency.