A randomized controlled trial of stage-matched intervention for smoking cessation in cardiac out-patients

Aim To examine the effectiveness of a stage-matched smoking cessation counselling intervention for smokers who had cardiac diseases. Methods A total of 1860 Chinese cardiac patients who smoked at least one cigarette in the past 7 days and aged 18 years or above recruited from cardiac out-patient clinics in Hong Kong hospitals were allocated randomly to an intervention group or control group. The intervention group (n=938) received counselling matched with their stage of readiness to quit by trained counsellors at baseline, 1 week and 1 month. The control group (n=922) received brief counselling on healthy diet at baseline. The primary outcomes were self-reported 7-day and 30-day point prevalence (PP) of tobacco abstinence at 12 months after baseline. The secondary outcome measures included biochemically validated abstinence at 12-month follow-up, self-reported 7-day and 30-day PP abstinence and reduction of cigarette consumption by 50% at 3 and 6 months. Results By intention-to-treat analysis, the intervention and control groups showed no significant difference in self-reported 7-day PP abstinence (intervention: 26.5% versus control: 25.5%; P=0.60) and 30-day PP (intervention: 25.4% versus control: 24.2%; P=0.55), biochemically validated abstinence (intervention: 6.6% versus control: 4.9%; P=0.14) and overall quit attempts of least 24 hours (intervention: 40.3% versus control: 34.3%; P=0.007) at the 12-month follow-up, adjusted for the baseline stage of readiness to quit smoking. Conclusions An intervention, based on the Stages of Change model, to promote smoking cessation in cardiac patients in China failed to find any long-term benefit. © 2011 The Authors, Addiction © 2011 Society for the Study of Addiction.