Effect on Smoking Quit Rate of Telling Smokers their Health Risk Appraisal in Terms of Health Age: A Randomized Control Trial

Abstract

Background: We evaluated whether providing health risk appraisal for Koreans (KHRA) in terms of 'health age' during smoking cessation program would effectively help smokers quit smoking or not. Materials and Methods: A total of 332 male smokers aged between 30-65 years old, registered for a smoking cessation program in a public health center in a city, were recruited and underwent a baseline survey from January 2010 to February 2011. They were then prospectively randomized to a conventional counseling group (n=165) or a KHRA group (n=167), and received conventional counseling or KHRA-based counseling for six months. Abstinence rates were identified through carbon monoxide measurement (at the 4 th and 24 th weeks) or urinary cotinine level (at the 12 th week). Results: The abstinence rate confirmed by exhaled carbon monoxide was significantly higher in the KHRA group (61.1%) than the control group (49.1%) at the 4 th week (absolute difference 12.0%, 95% CI: 1.4%-22.6%). However, there was no difference in abstinence rates between the two groups at the 12th and 24th weeks. The predicting factors of 24 week's smoking cessation success were age, older than 50 years old (OR 2.02, 95% CI: 1.16-3.52), lower Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence score less than 4 (OR 1.84, 95% CI: 1.03-3.29), and higher Self Efficacy/Temptation score (OR 1.79, 95% CI: 1.05-3.06). Conclusions: Smoking cessation counseling with KHRA could be effective compared to conventional counseling in the short period of smoking cessation. Further study is needed to evaluate the long-term efficacy of KHRA in tobacco dependence treatment and to establish the indication and target population of this tool.

How effective are ‘age’ tools at changing patient behaviour? A rapid review

“…Paek et al 25 showed that informing participants of their health age had no effect on smoking abstinence rates at 6 months. The control group given conventional counselling had a validated smoking abstinence of 17.6% compared with the intervention group given their health age who had a rate of 21.6%.…”

“…This was mostly due to the heterogeneity of the recruitment, measurements of patient behaviour and the use of different age calculators. Recruitment included GP practices,15 18 20 Foulds 2015 19 college campuses (Lipkus 2007), online access research panels (Souretti 2010, Dammon OC 2018), market research company recruitment,16 smoking cessation clinics,21 25 hospital records (Drummond 2014,22) employee from recycling company,26 telephone directory24 and Spanish public health workers 17. Therefore, a meta-analysis could not be performed on the data.…”

The effect of motivational lung age feedback on short-term quit rates in smokers seeking intensive group treatment: A randomized controlled pilot study

“…One potential weakness of this study is that it only examined short-term outcomes during the first month after a quit attempt. While it is possible that the Lung Age feedback may have a “sleeper effect”—a psychological effect on longer term smoking cessation, when we designed this study we felt it was much more likely that the intervention would initially affect short-term cessation (Paek et al, 2014), via better compliance with treatment, and this is what the study was designed to detect. No such effects were detected.…”

Self-rated Subjective Health Status Is Strongly Associated with Sociodemographic Factors, Lifestyle, Nutrient Intakes, and Biochemical Indices, but Not Smoking Status: KNHANES 2007-2012

“…However, public educational efforts have not succeed to decrease smoking rates in Korea including Asian countries and still the smoking rates (adult males: 48.3% in 2010) rank at the top among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries ( 7 ). Quit rates among smokers are low, even in smokers who intend to quit ( 8 9 10 ). However, some smokers have no intention of quitting, as smoking helps relieve mental stress ( 11 12 ).…”