Dental Offices Can Help People Stop Smoking
August 11, 2010

By Nancy Volkers
InteliHealth News Service

INTELIHEALTH - Dentists and dental hygienists can help people to stop using tobacco, a study has found. But success rates still are low.

Researchers from the University of Arizona, the University of Mississippi, Jackson, and the Oregon Research Institute in Eugene did the study. It involved 2,160 adult tobacco users. All were regular patients at 1 of 68 private dental clinics in Mississippi.

The researchers compared two types of dentist tobacco cessation interventions with usual care. One intervention used the U.S. Public Health Service guideline that recommends that dentists ask, advise, assess, assist and arrange follow-up (the 5As) with their dental patients. The second used ask and advise, but then referred (AAR) patients to a tobacco quitline. In clinics with usual care, patients received whatever counseling or information the office had been giving in the past.

The people in the study tended to be:

• White (81%)
• Female (60%)
• College educated (60% had at least some college classes)
• Married or living with a partner (59%)

Most (79%) people in the study were smokers. The rest used smokeless tobacco or both forms of tobacco.

At the beginning of the study half of the people in the study said they were seriously considering quitting in the next 30 days. About 54% had tried to quit in the last year.

One year after the study began, researchers asked the people if they had quit. They found that the two dental office tobacco intervention groups (5As and AAR) had quit more successfully, compared with the dental offices in the service as usual group.

People in AAR or 5A's were more likely than those in usual care to report that their dentists or hygienists:

• Discussed tobacco-related oral health
• Discussed a quit date
• Talked about quitting tips
• Talked about nicotine patches, lozenges or gum
• Provided prescriptions for patches, lozenges or gum
• Gave written materials on tobacco cessation

There were few differences between the 5As and the AAR interventions. People in the AAR group were more likely to get referred to a quitline and to receive a call from the quitline. About one-third of people in the AAR group were referred to a quitline, and most of them received quitline calls. However, most people did not actually receive telephone counseling. People who did receive counseling were about 4 times as likely to stop using tobacco (smoking or smokeless tobacco) for at least 9 months.

The study appears in the August issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association.