Researchers found people who were undergoing balloon angioplasty in
their 50s, on average, and quit smoking within one year after the
procedure lived another 18.5 years. In contrast, those who continued to
smoke lived about 16.4 years, on average, after angioplasty.
"Most (smokers) start smoking in their youth and have a smoking history
of 40-50 years," said Ron van Domburg, the senior author of the paper
and a clinical epidemiologist at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam,
The Netherlands.
"Most patients think it is too
late to quit smoking, but the major message of our study is that it is
never too late to stop smoking," he told Reuters Health in an email.
"Even if you're not willing to stop smoking (for) yourself, do it for
your grandchildren. They can enjoy their grandparents for an additional
two years."
Previous studies have shown that smoking contributes to an increased risk of heart-related illness and death.
But others reflect just how tough it can be to quit smoking. Relapse
rates are high, even with medications and behavioral therapies developed
to help people kick the habit.
According to a
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis of 2010 survey
data, about 69 percent of smokers want to stop smoking, and about half
of these make quit attempts each year. But of those, only about six
percent successfully stay off cigarettes.
To
determine whether or not quitting smoking is tied to increased life
expectancy after heart surgery, van Domburg and his colleagues collected
data on 806 patients who underwent balloon angioplasty at Erasmus
Medical Center between 1980 and 1985.
During
coronary balloon angioplasty, also known as percutaneous coronary
intervention (PCI), a balloon-tipped catheter is threaded through blood
vessels and the balloon is inflated to clear one or more narrowed
vessels.
The researchers asked patients about
their smoking habits before and one year after surgery and followed them
for up to 30 years. Of the patients, 309 were non-smokers, 210 quit
smoking after their surgery and 287 smoked before and after.
Non-smokers and people who had smoked but quit after surgery were
equally likely to die during the follow-up period, but death rates were
significantly higher among those who continued smoking.
At 30 years post-surgery, 29 percent of quitters were still alive,
compared to 14 percent of those who kept smoking, according to findings
published in The American Journal of Cardiology. The pattern held after
the researchers accounted for health differences between patients at the
time of their surgery.
Since the 1980s, new
techniques have been developed to treat blocked blood vessels, such as
minimally invasive coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and using bare
metal or drug eluting stents to permanently prop open blocked vessels.
The researchers said it's possible these advances still may not make up
for the damage done by smoking on the heart and other organs in the
body. But it's hard to know for sure, according to one researcher not
involved in the study.
"This group from the
early 1980s is very different from patients who currently undergo PCI
for angina and (heart attack) so the results may not apply today," Dr.
Timothy Crimmins, director of the Vascular Medicine Laboratory at New
York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center in New York City,
told Reuters Health in an email.
Crimmins noted that the study's importance lies in its long-term follow-up.
"This study is most interesting to me," he said, "Because it actually
followed up on a cohort of patients until death, and associated a real
increase in life expectancy for patients undergoing PCI who quit
smoking."
Crimmins said he planned to use the findings to help encourage his own patients to quit smoking for good.
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