Abstinence from smoking eight years after participation in randomised controlled trial of nicotine patch

Abstract

Few studies have investigated abstinence beyond three years among participants who stop smoking during trials of nicotine replacement therapy,1–3 and even fewer have followed up smokers who failed to quit during such trials. We carried out an eight year follow up of people who had participated in a randomised controlled trial of the nicotine patch. Participants were the 1686 patients from general practices in Oxfordshire who took part in a double blind randomised controlled trial of the patch in 1991-2.4 5 At entry they smoked≥15 cigarettes a day and were aged 25–64 years. Participants wore the patches for 12 weeks. The main outcome was abstinence from smoking for one year, confirmed at 12, 24, and 52 weeks by a salivary cotinine concentration≤20 ng/ml (89% of cases) or expired carbon monoxide≤10 ppm (11%). In 1999-2000, we contacted 1532 of the 1625 living participants. We …