ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Inpatient smoking cessation programs have been known to be quite effective for smoking cessation, but it was rarely conducted among Koreans. This study was to investigate the effect of inpatient smoking cessation program among Korean smokers. METHODS: From March 1 to April 30, 2008, we carried out a randomized controlled trial for inpatient smoking cessation program among 70 smokers who were 18 years of age or over and admitted to a university hospital in Seoul, Korea. For the intervention group, a trained doctor conducted the systematic educational program for smoking cessation of 30 minutes to an hour. For the control group, they were advised with a 3-minute explanation for smoking cessation. We assessed the abstinence rates of study participants at 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months after discharge. RESULTS: In 3 months after the discharge, the abstinence rate for the intervention group was 37.1% while that of the control group was 14.3%. In simple logistic regression analysis, the smokers among the intervention group were 3.5 times more likely to abstain than those in the control group. After controlling for confounding factors, the smokers among the intervention group was 11.4 times more likely to abstain than those in the control group. CONCLUSION: For Korean smokers, the inpatient smoking cessation program showed a higher success rate of abstinence compared to simple advice and limited counselling.
Subject(s)
Humans , Inpatients , Korea , Logistic Models , Smoke , Smoking , Smoking CessationABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Due to rapidly growing elderly population, there are increasing numbers of older persons with multiple chronic disorders and geriatric problems arising from polypharmacy. In this study we tried to find out the state of polypharmacy and inappropriate drug prescription and their related factors in community-dwelling elderly by review of drugs taken by older persons visiting a day health center. METHODS: From April 2007 to July 2007, 80 subjects of 65 year-old or over with chronic illness who visited a elderly-wellness and health care center were randomly sampled. All of them were surveyed by structured questionnaires, medical records review, pill counts about all medications they are taking and experience of adverse drug reactions. And all the prescribed medications were reviewed or their drug prescription's appropriateness for each elderly according to Beers criteria. Data results were evaluated by frequency and correlation analyses. RESULTS: The average counts of drugs taken by elderly with chronic disorders were 7.23, minimum 1 to maximum 27 drugs a day. Patients experienced more adverse effects significantly when more prescribed medications were taken (P=0.005), and patients with lack of information about their drugs had taken increased number of medications (P<0.001). Referred to Beers criteria, inappropriate cases of prescription were observed in 26 persons. Those drugs were NSAIDs including aspirin in 17 subjects (21%), amitrityline in 3 (4%), short-acting benzodiazepines in 3 (4%), long acting benzodiazepines in 2 (3%), and anticholinergic antihistamine in 1 (1%). CONCLUSION: Polypharmacy is very common in community-dwelling elderly with chronic disorders. More medications were related to more adverse drug reactions and lack of information about their drugs related to increased number of drug taking. High proportion of inappropriate drug prescriptions was observed in the elderly, which may have resulted from poor education concerning geriatric care of the medical personnels.