Dental care professionals have vital role in providing smoking-cessation services: Study

Smoking remains a major contributor to mortality and morbidity. Dental care professionals are positioned to help patients quit smoking. Results of clinical trials have shown the efficacy of dental care professionals' smoking-cessation advice; however, the evidence of its effectiveness in the general population in the United States is limited. The authors examined the association between smoking-cessation advice from dental care professionals and quitting behaviours of adult smokers in the general population.

The authors used an observational study design with data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for the years 2015 through 2018. The authors included 1,024 respondents 18 years and older who were current or former smokers who quit smoking within the past 12 months and reported a dental visit within the past 12 months.

Results:

Among the study sample, 44.6% received smoking-cessation advice from a dental care professional. The authors found no significant association between smoking-cessation advice and any attempt to quit smoking. Although respondents who received smoking-cessation advice reported 18% more quit attempts, smoking-cessation advice was not associated with smoking abstinence beyond 6 months.

Thus, the researchers concluded that receiving smoking-cessation advice from a dental care professional was associated with more attempts to quit smoking but not with abstinence of 6 months or longer. Additional efforts seem to be needed for smoking cessation in dental practices. Implementing enhanced incentive programs or promoting tobacco-use cessation certification in dental education may be an effective strategy to enhance dental professionals' knowledge and skills in providing additional support to their patients.

In this study of a representative population of current and former smokers in the United States, we found that dental care professionals' advice about quitting smoking may encourage patients to quit smoking, as evidenced by the greater number of quit attempts; however, smoking-cessation advice alone does not result in successfully quitting smoking. Dental care professionals have a vital role in providing smoking-cessation services, and further emphasis on this role is needed. Our results may inform future policies that focus on providing support to dental care professionals and removing the barriers that impede the success of their smoking-cessation interventions.

Reference:

Smoking-cessation advice from dental care professionals and its association with smoking status Analysis of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2015-2018 by Sandhya Yadav, et al published in The Journal of the American Dental Association

https://jada.ada.org/article/S0002-8177(21)00436-0/fulltext