Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015 May 7;5(5):e007249.
doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-007249.

The relationship between smoking status and health-related quality of life among smokers who participated in a 1-year smoking cessation programme in Taiwan: a cohort study using the EQ-5D

Affiliations

The relationship between smoking status and health-related quality of life among smokers who participated in a 1-year smoking cessation programme in Taiwan: a cohort study using the EQ-5D

Pei-Ching Chen et al. BMJ Open. .

Abstract

Objective: To assess the relationship between smoking status and health-related quality of life 1 year after participation in a smoking cessation programme in Taiwan.

Design: A cohort study of smokers who voluntarily participated in a smoking cessation programme with two follow-up assessments of smoking status via telephone interview, conducted 6 months and 1 year after finishing the smoking cessation programme.

Setting: Hospitals and clinics providing smoking cessation services.

Participants: A total of 3514 participants completed both telephone interviews, which represents a response rate of 64%. After the interviews, participants were divided into four groups according to their smoking status: (1) long-term quitters: participants who had quit tobacco use for 1 year; (2) short-term quitters: participants who had been smoking for at least 6 months and then quit tobacco for 6 months after participating in the programme; (3) relapsed smokers: participants who relapsed into tobacco use after ceasing tobacco use for 6 months; and (4) continuing smokers: participants who failed to quit smoking for at least 1 year, despite participating in the programme.

Interventions: The Outpatient Smoking Cessation Service of Taiwan provides counselling and pharmacotherapy to individuals seeking to quit smoking.

Primary outcomes: The health-related quality of life of the participants was measured using an approved Chinese version of the EuroQol-5D-3L (EQ-5D-3L) descriptive system.

Results: After controlling for sex, age, education, marital status, job status, monthly income and disease status at baseline, our results revealed that long-term (OR=0.61 (0.48 to 0.77)) and short-term (OR=0.65 (0.54 to 0.79)) quitters experienced less anxiety and depression than did continuing smokers.

Conclusions: Our study provides evidence to support claims that all quitters, regardless of whether they stop smoking for 6 months or 1 year, have better quality of life with regard to anxiety or depression.

Keywords: EQ-5D; Smoking Cessation; health-related quality of life.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health effects of cigarette smoking. Secondary health effects of cigarette smoking, 2013. http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/ef...
    1. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health benefits of cessation. Secondary health benefits of cessation, 2013. http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/cessation/quittin...
    1. Stewart AL, King AC, Killen JD et al. . Does smoking cessation improve health-related quality-of-life? Ann Behav Med 1995;17:331–8. 10.1007/BF02888598 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Mody RR, Smith MJ. Smoking status and health-related quality of life: as findings from the 2001 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data. Am J Health Promot 2006;20:251–8. 10.4278/0890-1171-20.4.251 - DOI - PubMed
    1. McClave AK, Dube SR, Strine TW et al. . Associations between health-related quality of life and smoking status among a large sample of U.S. adults. Prev Med 2009;48:173–9. 10.1016/j.ypmed.2008.11.012 - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources