Possible role of measuring and telling lung age for smokers with chronic diseases

Abstract

Backgrounds: Cigarette smoking causes the variety of chronic diseases and its cessation benefits for treating their illnesses and preventing new comorbidities. However, in the clinical situation, there are some patients who continue their smoking after the diagnosis. Recently, the effectiveness of measuring and telling “lung age” on promoting smoking cessation have been reported. Then, we assessed whether it would be also effective for patients with chronic diseases as promoting smoking cessation.
Methods: We enrolled 123 patients who were diagnosed as having chronic diseases (diabetes, respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases or gastrointestinal diseases) in Saitama Kyodo Hospital and smoking had been continued after the diagnosis. In those patients, we classified into two groups; one was promoted smoking cessation only (control group; n = 52) and the other was that not only promoted smoking cessation but also measured and explained their “lung age” (lung age group; n = 58); and evaluated the changes of their minds for smoking cessation using questionnaires.
Results: Age, smoking history and minds for smoking cessation were not different between lung age and control groups. Of 52 patients in control group, five (10%) improved their minds for smoking cessation, whereas 14 patients (24%) in lung age group improved. Although it did not reach the statistically significant difference (p = 0.078), patients with respiratory diseases significantly improved their minds of smoking cessation.
Conclusions: As promoting smoking cessation, our data suggested that measuring and telling “lung age” was effective for smoking-continued patients with respiratory diseases.