Background
Patients who smoke at the time of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) would ideally have a strong incentive to quit, but most do not. We sought to compare the health status outcomes of those who did and did not quit smoking after PCI with those who were not smoking prior to PCI.
Methods and Results
A cohort of 2,765 PCI patients from 10 US centers were categorized into never, past (smoked in the past, but had quit prior to PCI), quitters (smoked at time of PCI, but then quit), and persistent smokers. Health status was measured with the disease-specific Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) and the EuroQol 5 Dimensions (EQ-5D), adjusted for baseline characteristics. In unadjusted analyses, persistent smokers had worse disease-specific and overall health status as compared with other groups. In fully-adjusted analyses, persistent smokers showed significantly worse health-related quality of life as compared with never smokers. Importantly, of those who smoked at the time of PCI, quitters had significantly better adjusted SAQ angina frequency scores (mean difference=2.73; 95% CI, 0.13 to 5.33) and trends towards higher disease specific (SAQ quality of life mean difference=1.97; 95% CI, -1.24 to 5.18), and overall (EQ-5D VAS scores mean difference=2.45; 95% CI, -0.58 to 5.49) quality of life as compared with persistent smokers at 12 months.
Conclusions
While smokers at the time of PCI have worse health status at 1 year than those who never smoked, smokers who quit after PCI have less angina at 1 year than those who continue smoking.