A new study has found that nine years after diagnosis, 9.3 percent of U.S. cancer survivors are current smokers and 83 percent of these individuals are daily smokers who smoked an average of 14.7 cigarettes a day. The study appears in the AACR journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
"We need to follow up with cancer survivors long after their diagnoses to see whether they are still smoking and offer appropriate counseling, interventions, and possible medications to help them quit," said the lead author, J. Lee Westmaas, PhD, Director of Tobacco Research for the American Cancer Society.
He and his co-researchers analyzed data on 2,938 patients nine years after their diagnoses. Survivors were more likely to smoke if they were younger, had less education and income, or drank more alcohol.
About 40 percent of smokers said they planned to quit within the next month, but this intention was lower among survivors who were married, older, or smoked more.
"Smoking is addictive, and having cancer does not guarantee that you will stop, even if that cancer was directly tied to your smoking," Westmaas said in a news release. "We need to do more to intervene with these patients."
In their discussion, he and his coauthors-Kassandra I. Alcaraz, Carla J. Berg, and Kevin D. Stein-note that prior research suggests that many survivors do want to quit following their diagnosis. "Those who smoke heavily long after their diagnosis may require more intense treatment addressing specific psychosocial characteristics such as perceptions of risk, beliefs of fatalism, etc., that may influence motivation to quit.
"We propose that the relatively high survivability of a cancer, in the absence of comorbid conditions long after diagnosis, may contribute to reduced perceptions of risk or severity that lower interest in quitting among some long-term survivors who smoked at the time of diagnosis. If supported by evidence, this would be important to address in treatment for long-term survivors.
"Attention to patient-provider communication and feelings of stigma and guilt by survivors with smoking-related cancers, is also warranted. Any intervention, however, will need to address the unique disease- and treatment-related complexities of cancer survivors to be maximally effective."