Registration and Management of Smoking Behaviour
This journal article describes a study conducted to establish to what extent smoking status and its management is recorded in coronary patients’ medical records, and to investigate patients’ motivation to change smoking behavior. In EUROASPIRE, a survey on secondary prevention in 21 hospitals in the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Spain, data were collected from the records of 4,863 consecutive patients aged 70 years and younger with previous admission for coronary bypass operation, angioplasty, myocardial infarction, or ischemia. Of these, 3,569 patients were interviewed for one to six years following their index hospitalization. Of the 82 percent of patients whose pre-hospitalization smoking behavior was known, 34 percent were smokers. Documentation was significantly better in younger patients, in males, and in patients requiring angioplasty or bypass operation. In only 35 percent of 1,364 smokers was the smoking habit recorded again after discharge from hospital. At the time of the interview, 554 of the interviewed patients were still smoking. In over 90 percent of the smokers, advice to quit smoking was reported at interview. A positive relationship was found between receiving advice and seeking help to stop smoking, between receiving advice to stop smoking and attempting to stop, and between seeking help and attempting to stop. In almost 20 percent of coronary patients, smoking habits are not documented in medical records, and in only 35 percent of smoking patients is smoking status documented at the follow-up. After a cardiac event requiring hospitalization, as many as 50 percent of patients continue their smoking habit. This study demonstrates that there is further potential to reduce the risk of recurrent coronary disease. Advice to stop smoking motivates patients to seek help and to attempt to stop smoking. Physicians’ repeated advice to stop smoking is important and smoking status should always be documented at follow-up
