Smokers who are diagnosed with cancer now have more incentive to quit, as researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have found survival outcomes were optimized when patients quit smoking within six months of their diagnosis.
Study results, published in JAMA Oncology, found a 22%-26% reduction in cancer-related mortality among those who had quit smoking within three months after tobacco treatment began. The best outcomes were observed in patients who started tobacco treatment within six months of a cancer diagnosis and were abstinent from smoking three months later. Survival for these patients increased from 2.1 years for smokers to 3.9 years for abstainers.
In the current study, researchers followed a cohort of 4,526 current smokers who had been diagnosed with cancer and were receiving cessation treatment at MD Anderson. The patients included men and women aged 47 to 62. More than 95% of visits in the study were provided via telemedicine. Abstinence was defined as self-reported no smoking in the seven days before each assessment, at the three-, six- and nine-month follow-up marks. The primary outcome was survival recorded by the MD Anderson tumor registry.
