Smoking Cessation, Quality
of Life & Older Persons This site
is intended to provide information on and access to materials concerning smoking
cessation, the effects of smoking cessation on the health of older persons,
and the value of healthy lifestyles for older persons, which include not smoking
or being subjected to secondhand smoke. Since this portion of this site has
been created in August, 2000, we will largely be including materials and articles
below which are published after this date; for references to materials on
this subject published prior to this date, go to the section of this site
titled Bibliography of Tobacco & Older Persons Articles. Additional materials
will be added to this site on a regular basis. Related information can be found
on the following sections of this web site: Tobacco-related Health Problems
& Older Persons; Tobacco & the Elderly Notes newsletters; and the Smoke-Free
Environments Law Project site, particularly the ETS & Health Effects portion
of that site. The following are materials/articles/resources
related to this topic (simply click on the underlined headings to access the
full articles/materials/resources): CESSATION RESOURCES/QUITLINES/INFOLINES/BIBLIOGRAPHIES Smoking
Cessation & Older Persons Brochure TCSG
has designed a smoking cessation brochure which targets older adults. Organizations
which would find this brochure useful, are welcome to download it, print it
out, and distribute it. Smoking
Cessation Links for Smokers
Smoking Cessation Hotlines & Helplines A list
of national as well as statewide cessation helplines has been compiled; many
of the statewide hotlines are available only to residents of that state, and
for most of them, access to the number is available only when calling from
a phone number within that state.
Smoking Cessation Links for Health Care
Providers & Policymakers This
list of smoking cessation links includes some of the best sources for smoking
cessation information on the web. The sites included in the list are especially
useful for anyone who is working on smoking cessation policy or providing
health care. Bibliography
of Smoking Cessation Articles Concerning Older Adults This bibliography,
prepared by The Center for Social Gerontology in July, 2001, presents a comprehensive,
albeit not all-encompassing, list of recent articles on smoking cessation
and nicotine reduction concerning older adults, including minority older adults.
Most of the articles in this listing were published after 1996 because TCSG's
Bibliography of Tobacco and the Elderly Articles which can be accessed
here, include a section on "Smoking
Cessation," which lists articles on this topic largely published between the
late 1980s and 1996. TCSG has produced this bibliography in the hope that
it will assist others in conducting further research on smoking cessation
and nicotine reduction targeted to older adults, and that it will encourage
others to establish smoking cessation and nicotine reduction programs which
focus on older adults. SMOKING
CESSATION TREATMENTS, BENEFITS, STUDIES & OLDER PERSONS Smoking
Cessation & the Elderly Best Practice Publications & Programs The Center for
Social Gerontology has compiled a list of publications and/or program descriptions
which are particularly germane for smoking cessation and the elderly. When
possible, we have included a link to the full publication or the abstract.
Smoking Cessation & Older Persons: A Case Example This February
5, 2001 news story describes the experience of a 60 year old man who successfully
completed a smoking cessation course after having been a smoker for more than
45 years. The Chicopee resident, Roger Carrington, enrolled in the Freedom
From Smoking class at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts
and, when the news article was written, he had not had a cigarette for 17
days; this was the longest he had quit since he started smoking at the age
of 12 or 13. Mr. Carrington had discovered how addictive smoking was this
past fall when he had pneumonia but continued smoking through the entire illness.
Soon afterward, his wife convinced him to quit, which he has done with a combination
of the course and the antidepressant Wellbutrin. Carrington says he is already
feeling healthier. This article describes the experiences of a number of persons
who also went through the course. The article demonstrates that smokers can
quit at any age, and that positive health effects can be felt within a very
short time. New Treatments for Smoking Cessation This article
by Dr. John Hughes appeared in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians in
the May/June, 2000 issue and and provides a concise summary of new treatments
for smoking cessation for persons of all ages, including older persons. The
article discusses basic facts about smoking, treatments, nicotine replacement
therapies and methods of motivating smokers to try to quit. Medicare Recipients with Heart Conditions Rarely
Told to Quit Smoking In the
October 4, 2000 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association
(JAMA) in an article titled Quality of Medical Care Delivered to Medicare
Beneficiaries the authors reported that only about 40% of the time were
Medicare beneficiaries who had suffered heart attacks provided with smoking
cessation counseling by their medical care provider. The article reports on
a variety of quality of care indicators for each state and provides state-specific
data, e.g., 69% of Medicare beneficiaries in Wyoming were advised to quit
smoking (the highest state), 42% of Michiganians were (close to the median
of 40%), and just 19% of Texans were (the lowest state). This clearly suggests
a need for the medical community to increase its efforts to inform older smokers
of the value of quitting smoking. This analysis looked only at Medicare beneficiaries
who were served in the traditional fee-for-service system, not in managed
care settings; see article below for data on managed care Medicare recipients,
where about 70% of older persons were advised about smoking cessation. Click
above for JAMA abstract; full article is only accessible to JAMA subscribers.
For news article on this study, click here. Medicare
Managed Care Recipients Not Always Advised to Quit Smoking The September
8, 2000 Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report has a feature article titled
Receipt of Advice to Quit Smoking in Medicare Managed Care -- United States,
1998. This is one of the first, if not the first, such analyses of whether
Medicare recipients are routinely being advised to quit smoking when they
go for medical appointments. The report notes that 29% of Medicare recipients
enrolled in Medicare managed care plans who visited their doctor in the past
year were not advised to quit smoking. The report points out that, while only
about 13% of Medicare recipients are smokers, "older smokers are at greater
risk from smoking because they have smoked longer, tend to be heavier smokers,
and are more likely to suffer already from smoking-related diseases." The
report emphasizes the need for health care providers to encourage all smokers,
including older persons, to quit smoking. The report notes that African Americans
and Hispanics received less advice to quit than did whites, as did smokers
aged 75 and over. The charts provide break-outs of smoking data by various
age groups of persons aged 55 and over. Elderly
Smokers Also Benefit From Quitting A new research
review by Dr. David Burns confirms that quitting smoking at any age is beneficial.
The study, published in the July/August, 2000 issue of the American Journal
of Health Promotion, demonstrates that older smokers, whether heavy or light
smokers, will achieve improved health by quitting, even among smokers aged
70 and over. Burns stated: "This is a population where preventive services
should not be ignored." Burns said that elderly smokers can bounce back after
quitting and gain health benefits, although not as significantly as younger
smokers. He also points out that, even among diseases such as COPD, where
the damage due to smoking is not reversible, quitting can prevent further
complications. Freedom
and Quality of Life The August,
2000 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health contains an
editorial titled "Freedom and Quality of Life," which comments on an article
in that issue of the Journal titled "Smoking and the Compression of Morbidity"
(see link to article below) and points out that the findings are similar to
those in earlier studies by Vita and colleagues and by Furrucci and colleagues.
The editorial states that the study "shows that smoking is a cause of a great
number of years lived with disability, [and] is the best answer we can give
to those who think that smoking would save money by killing smokers before
they get too old and disabled." Article no longer available online, except
to subscribers. Smoking
and the Compression of Morbidity Recently,
there have been a number of studies which have examined the question of whether
eliminating smoking will lead to a reduction in the number of years lived
with disability. Or, put another way, will stopping smoking enable persons
to not only live longer, but live a better quality of life right up to death.
A new study, published in the August, 2000 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology
and Community Health, titled "Smoking and the Compression of Morbidity," by
Nusselder, et al, looked at this question and concluded that "eliminating
smoking will not only extend life and result in an increase in the number
of years lived without disability, but will also compress disability into
a shorter period." This is an important study, with a wealth of data. Click
above for the abstract; the full article is no longer available online except
to subscribers. Smoking Cessation and Risk of Age-Related Cataract
in Men This article
in the August 9, 2000 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association
states that smoking has been shown to be a risk factor for the development
of age-related cataract and concludes that, while some smoking-related damage
to the eye lens may be reversible, smoking cessation reduces the risk of cataract
primarily by limiting the total dose-related damage to the lens. The study
found that men who had quit smoking had a 23% reduced risk of cataract diagnosis
and a 28% reduced risk for cataract extraction (a surgical treatment) compared
to men who currently smoked. The authors found that even the most heavily
exposed men benefited from smoking cessation, at any age. Healthy
Lifestyles & Tobacco: A Healthy Old Age Equals No Smoking The Spring/Summer, 1999 issue
of TCSG's Tobacco & the Elderly Notes newsletter contains this article which
examines the relationship of smoking to people living a healthy old age. The
article includes references to the conclusions found in the excellent 1998
book "Successful Aging" by Drs. Rowe and Kahn. Included is information on
mortality, premature deaths, the debilitating effects of tobacco-related diseases
on quality of life, the perceptions of smokers about the risks of smoking,
and information on smoking cessation. Photos of tobacco ads which today's
elders to tobacco are included.
The Center for Social Gerontology
2307 Shelby Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48103 tel:
734 665-1126 fax: 734 665-2071
tcsg@tcsg.org