Effect of smoking cessation counseling within a randomised study on early detection of lung cancer in Germany.
INTRODUCTION
In the German lung cancer screening trial LUSI, smoking cessation counseling (SCC) was offered to all participants at time of randomization, and smoking habits were asked for within annual questionnaire inquiries. We analyzed the smoking habits of the participants within the first 2 years of follow-up and especially the potential effect of the SCC on these habits.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
We used the smoking data of the initial inquiry on which the decision on invitation to the study was based, the socio-economic data of the questionnaire filled-in at time of randomization, the psycho-social data obtained during the SCC, and the annual questionnaire data of the first two annual follow-up screening rounds.


RESULTS
Smoking prevalence decreased in the entire cohort significantly by 4 %, whereby the decrease was with 4.5 % statistically not significantly higher in the control arm than in the screening arm with 3.4 %. The decline was much stronger in the subgroup of attendees to stop-smoking counseling and mounted up therein to 10 %. In some participants, an increase of readiness to quit smoking was observed during the counseling hour, but did not show effects on smoking status 2 years later.


DISCUSSION
We did not see a tendency to increased smoking among participants of the intervention arm or the entire study. The decline of smoking prevalence among the attendees of the counseling might be due to self-selection. Since the issue of effectiveness of smoking cessation counseling is important, further research with randomization into offering counseling or no intervention should be taken into consideration.
['Bade|M|M|', 'Bähr|V|V|', 'Brandt|U|U|', 'Eigentopf|A|A|', 'Brüchert|T|T|', 'Gross|M-L|ML|', 'Motsch|E|E|', 'Becker|N|N|']
D000368:Aged D003376:Counseling D055088:Early Detection of Cancer D018479:Early Intervention, Educational D005260:Female D005500:Follow-Up Studies D005858:Germany D006801:Humans D008175:Lung Neoplasms D008297:Male D008875:Middle Aged D015995:Prevalence D011379:Prognosis D012907:Smoking D016540:Smoking Cessation D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
Screening LUSI Quit smoking Low-dose CT MSCT Multislice CT