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We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com. Back to Healio Key takeaways: A virtual smoking cessation intervention resulted in double the quit rates among patients with cancer compared with enhanced usual care. Most participants reported not being ready to quit before the trial. A telehealth-based smoking cessation program significantly improved quit rates among patients with cancer treated at community practices. A randomized trial showed patients who received the virtual intervention, which also included no-cost medication, achieved double the abstinence rate at 6 months compared with those who were referred to the NCI quitline.
Data derived from Park ER, et al. J Clin Oncol. 2026;doi:10.1200\/JCO-25-02267.
Jamie S. Ostroff \u201cHelping patients stop smoking after a cancer diagnosis is feasible and impactful, and it can be readily embedded into community oncology care,\u201d Jamie S. Ostroff, PhD, chief of behavioral sciences service and director of the tobacco treatment program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, told Healio. Elyse R. Park \u201cEven with patients who might not be ready to quit, and particularly for those who struggle the most with quitting,\u201d Elyse R. Park, PhD, MPH, director of behavioral sciences at the Tobacco Research and Treatment Center at Mass General Brigham and director of the MGB Cancer Institute smokefree support service, added. Smoking can compromise cancer outcomes Roughly 15% of patients with cancer report being active smokers, and many of them continue after receiving the diagnosis, according to study background. \u201cLots of people feel like after decades of public health messaging that surely nobody smokes,\u201d Ostroff said. \u201cThe data show that patients still struggle with tobacco dependence.\u201d Individuals with cancer who smoke have increased risk for progression and recurrence, secondary malignancies, treatment complications, and death. Healio previously reported patients who quit smoking after their cancer diagnosis halved their mortality risk compared with those who continued. \u201cEveryone knows smoking is bad,\u201d Ostroff said. \u201cWhat fewer patients and the doctors and nurses that care for them appreciate is that smoking has adverse consequences after cancer diagnosis, and that smoking cessation improves outcomes.\u201d Interventions targeting patients with cancer who smoke have demonstrated effectiveness. Healio previously reported on the No Smoker Left Behind initiative at The University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center, which referred nearly 900 patients to counseling and\/or medication referrals. Among those who responded to follow-up, 58.7% attempted to quit in the prior month, 16.2% stopped smoking for at least 8 days, and 15% reported smoking less than at enrollment. However, most interventions have been developed and tested at comprehensive cancer centers, despite more than 80% of patients with cancer receiving care at community centers, Park said. \u201cWe thought it was important to prove we could bring this care to the community,\u201d she explained. Researchers randomly assigned 306 patients (median age, 57 years; 70.9% women; 86.3% white) who were within 4 months of their cancer diagnosis and smoked in the previous 30 days to receive the intervention (n = 156) or enhanced usual care (n = 150). The virtual treatment intervention included up to 11 telehealth counseling visits with Mass General Brigham providers and free nicotine replacement therapy. Enhanced usual care consisted of a referral to NCI quitline. \u201cWe wanted [the trial] to be rigorous, but we also wanted to provide an evidence-based control condition rather than the typical no-treatment control,\u201d Ostroff said. \u201cWe recognize that for some centers, a referral to the quitline will be right-sized for their resources.\u201d Additionally, 45.4% of participants had nonsmoking-related tumors. \u201cThis is important,\u201d Ostroff said. \u201cA lot of prior studies have only recruited individuals who were diagnosed and treated for lung cancer or a head and neck cancer.\u201d Abstinence, defined as 7 days without smoking, at 6 months served as the primary endpoint. \u2018High-quality part of cancer care\u2019 At baseline, participants smoked a median 12 cigarettes per day and for a median 35 years. Additionally, 73.2% smoked within 30 minutes of waking up and 48.4% allowed smoking in their homes. Only 38.8% reported being ready to quit. The intervention arm had a significantly higher rate of abstinence at both 3 months (24.7% vs. 15%; OR = 1.86; 99.75% CI, 0.76-4.57) and 6 months (28.4% vs. 14.7%; OR = 2.3; 99.8% CI, 1.07-4.97). \u201cGiven the fact that almost half of the individuals were not motivated at all to quit smoking, and a lot of smoking cessation studies do not enroll those individuals, we were really happy with our results,\u201d Park said. \u201cThe majority are addicted physically. They live in environments where they\u2019re saturated with smoking, so we were very happy with doubling [the abstinence rate].\u201d Among participants in the intervention arm, those who completed at least eight sessions had a significantly higher likelihood of being abstinent than those who completed one to four sessions (46.4% vs. 13.3%; OR = 4.91; 95% CI, 1.78-13.54). Among those who did not quit, the intervention arm had a numerically higher proportion of patients who reduced their smoking prevalence at least 50% at 6 months (45.6% vs. 35.3%). Overall, 81% of participants in the intervention arm had at least one virtual appointment. Just 5.3% of those in the usual care arm finished a quitline session. Among those who had at least one virtual session, 85.7% received nicotine replacement therapy. The intervention arm had a significantly higher rate of any medication use (83% vs. 49.5%; OR = 3.8; 95% CI, 2.13-6.79). \u201cI was pleasantly surprised that we were able to engage the majority of patients in this virtual sustained treatment,\u201d Ostroff said. \u201cWe removed many of the barriers that exist, including lack of local staff by providing the intervention via telehealth, and providing free nicotine replacement with no patient out-of-pocket expenses.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3421,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsoniafawad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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