Smoking cessation, the risk of blindness, a strong motivation to quit

Few people are aware of the risk of tobacco-related blindness and yet the fear of losing sight represent an effective incentive to quit smoking, according to the results of a published in the journal "Eye" British study.

The link between smoking and diseases of vision, particularly macular degeneration related to age (AMD), which is the leading cause of blindness after age 50, has been repeatedly emphasized. And a summary of 17 different published studies on this subject, also published the magazine "Eye", confirms that smokers are two to three times more likely than nonsmokers to become blind.

This study was initiated to determine the level of public information on the existence of the link between smoking and blindness, and to evaluate its potential incentive for smoking cessation effect.

Among adult patients interviewed between May and June 2004 in a British hospital 402, only 9.5% knew that smoking could lead to blindness. However, the level of knowledge was found significantly higher on the increased risk of lung cancer, cardiovascular disease and stroke (CVA) of smoking (with respectively 92.2%, 87 6% and 70.6% of participants in the current).

The respondents were then asked to rank these different conditions, by noting on a scale from 1 to 5 (the lowest rating is attributed to the disease they fear less). According to testimonies, the fear of going blind (with an average score of 2.8) seems to be significantly less than that of suffering from cardiovascular disease (3.58) or lung cancer (3, 89).

However, one in two smokers said that he would rather quit completely, or at least reduce consumption of tobacco, he was informed of the risk of blindness.

These results suggest that better public information about the risk of tobacco-related blindness could be an effective approach to encourage people to stop smoking, the authors conclude