CT scan: the repetition of abnormal incentive to stop smoking

Repeating an abnormal CT scan seems to have an incentive effect on smoking cessation, reveal the authors of a study on-line on the website of the journal "Cancer", suggesting doctors to multiply this review and enter this opportunity to encourage patients to quit smoking.

Various surveys show that 70% of smokers who spend chest scans under the supervision of lung cancer intend to quit.

Many researchers are interested in the opportunity to use the results of this review to motivate smokers to quit their tobacco use. There is some research that smokers who have been diagnosed with diseases and are more motivated to reach this goal more successfully than others.

A study specifically on early CT scan and low dose let appear this review as an appropriate time to explain to the patient the reasons to quit smoking. But done once a year, this review was not accompanied by an increase in the rate of discontinuation.

James R. Jett and Stephen J. Swensen of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, were then asked whether the multiplication of this review, if abnormal, could eventually have an incentive effect on smoking cessation.

For this, they followed 926 smokers and 594 former smokers who spent three years on a scanner under the supervision of lung cancer. The more abnormal was important, most smokers kept their smoking and remained abstinent at the end of three years of study.

After the third review, 42% of smokers who had three abnormal findings on CT were abstinent, against 28% of smokers who had two abnormal results and 24 and 20% of those who had an abnormal result and no respectively, says Matthew Mr. Clark, a psychologist who participated.

Among the factors contributing to smoking cessation, age, deterioration in lung function and an abnormal scan obtained at the last examination proved the most incentives.

The authors conclude that "the proliferation of thoracic scanners may increase the primary and secondary prevention efforts" of smoking and lung cancer.