REVIEW ER 'S CONCLUSIONS Quitting smoking is associated with a substantial reduction in risk of all-cause mortality among patients with CHD .
This 36 % risk reduction appears substantial compared with other secondary preventive therapies such as cholesterol lowering which have received greater attention in recent years .
The risk reduction associated with quitting smoking seems consistent regardless of differences between the studies in terms of index cardiac events , age , sex , country , and time period .
BACKGROUND Although the importance of smoking as a risk factor for coronary heart disease is beyond doubt , the speed and magnitude of risk reduction when a smoker with coronary heart disease quits are still subjects of debate .
OBJECTIVES To estimate the magnitude of risk reduction when a patient with CHD stops smoking .
Beneficial effect of stopping smoking on future cardiac events in male smokers with previous myocardial infarction.
UNLABELLED We assessed the effect of stopping smoking on future cardiac events ( cardiac death and non-fatal myocardial infa rct ion ( MI ) ) in 90 male smokers with previous MI by a prospect i ve follow-up study . At the time of enrollment , the patients were divided into 2 groups according to their current smoking status ( Group A : those who had stopped smoking ( n = 60 ) , and Group B : those who were still smoking ( n = 30 ) ) . Follow-up was performed prospect ively by annual postal question naires . During the mean follow-up period of 3.1 + /- 1.4 years , 13 cardiac events ( 11 cardiac deaths and 2 cases of non-fatal MI ) occurred in the 87 evaluable patients . The cardiac event rates in Groups A and B were 8.5 % and 28.6 % , respectively , and the relative risk was 3.4 ( Group A vs B , p less than 0.05 ) by univariate analysis . The relative risk using multivariate analysis ( Cox ) was also statistically significant ( 3.1 , p less than 0.05 ) . HDL-cholesterol was significantly lower in Group B than in Group A , but other coronary risk factors apart from smoking were not significantly different between the two groups . At the end of the follow-up period , 89.8 % of the patients in Group A remained nonsmokers and 21 % of the patients in Group B had stopped smoking . CONCLUSION Stopping smoking significantly reduced the risk of future cardiac events in male smokers with previous MI . This prospect i ve follow-up study demonstrated that a significant reduction in the risk of future cardiac events could be achieved by stopping smoking in this group of patients
REVIEW ER 'S CONCLUSIONS Quitting smoking is associated with a substantial reduction in risk of all-cause mortality among patients with CHD .
This 36 % risk reduction appears substantial compared with other secondary preventive therapies such as cholesterol lowering which have received greater attention in recent years .
The risk reduction associated with quitting smoking seems consistent regardless of differences between the studies in terms of index cardiac events , age , sex , country , and time period .
BACKGROUND Although the importance of smoking as a risk factor for coronary heart disease is beyond doubt , the speed and magnitude of risk reduction when a smoker with coronary heart disease quits are still subjects of debate .
OBJECTIVES To estimate the magnitude of risk reduction when a patient with CHD stops smoking .