Even if you get cancer, quitting smoking improves outcomes.
A new analysis found a 22-26% reduction in cancer-related mortality among those who had quit smoking within three months of using smoking cessation and harm reduction techniques. The best outcomes were observed in patients who were abstinent from smoking three months after their cancer diagnosis. Survival for these patients increased from 2.1 years for smokers to 3.9 years for abstainers. This is only EXPLORATORY because of non-cancer related health conditions and the fact that patients in this study were participants in an institutionally sponsored treatment program.
Despite it being just correlation, cigarettes have so much weight of evidence that, along with alcohol and obesity, there is no debate about their causal effect, yet even though cigarettes are discussed in cancer prevention, oncologists don't talk about smoking cessation or harm reduction much. Inhalation of smoke is what kills, in fires and in everyday behavior, but governments have instead begun to focus on nicotine, which is addictive but not the health problem, it even reduces the health problem. Cigarette use at or following a cancer diagnosis increases both all-cause and cancer-specific mortality, as well as risk for disease progression and second primary cancers. Each year, about 480,000 Americans die from cigarettes-related illnesses.
The cohort was 4,526 current smokers who had been diagnosed with cancer and were receiving cessation treatment at University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. 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.
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