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Recycling with nicotine patches in smoking cessation
Author(s) -
TØNNESEN PHILIP,
NØRREGAARD JESPER,
SÄWE URBAIN,
SIMONSEN KÅRE
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
addiction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.424
H-Index - 193
eISSN - 1360-0443
pISSN - 0965-2140
DOI - 10.1111/j.1360-0443.1993.tb02060.x
Subject(s) - nicotine , abstinence , smoking cessation , medicine , cotinine , nicotine patch , placebo , anesthesia , psychiatry , alternative medicine , pathology
The aim was to evaluate if recycling of failures from a smoking cessation study may be of value. The study comprised 126 smokers (50%) of 252 failures, from a double‐blind smoking cessation trial with nicotine patch, who accepted recycling after 1 year. Subjects were allocated nicotine patches delivering 15, 20 or 25 mg of nicotine (over 16 hours) according to their base‐line saliva cotinine concentrations in an open trial. The treatment period was 12 weeks followed by tapering over 6 weeks. The percentage of quitters after 3, 12, 26, and 52 weeks was 44, 20, 7 and 6%, respectively. After 26 weeks, all subjects had relapsed in the group previously treated with active nicotine patch compared with 12% abstainers in the previous placebo subjects. The sustained abstinence rate without slips after one year was 2%. Recycling does not seem to be of long‐term clinical relevance in our set‐up for subjects initially treated with nicotine, but of some value in subjects quitting without nicotine therapy initially.