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Medications (including all types of nicotine replacement therapy, bupropion and varenicline) have been shown to help people quit smoking. It has been unclear how much additional benefit is gained from also providing behavioural support, such as counselling or a telephone quitline. Combined results from 38 trials suggests that increasing the amount of ...

Biomedical risk assessment is the process of giving smokers feedback on the physical effects of smoking using physiological measurements (for example: exhaled carbon monoxide measurement or lung function tests). It has been considered as a tool to encourage smokers to quit. This review includes 15 studies. Of them, only two found that biomedical risk ...

Behavioural support (such as brief advice and counselling) and medications (including varenicline, bupropion, and nicotine replacement therapies like patches or gum) help people quit smoking. Many guidelines recommend combining medication and behavioural support to help people stop smoking, but it is unclear if some combinations are more effective than ...

Combined, evidence from five studies included in this review finds that interventions delivered by mobile phones can help people stop smoking, though the results from individual studies varied. The interventions included in this review mainly use text messaging to provide motivation, support and tips for quitting. There are no published studies on smartphone ...

More evidence is needed to determine if programmes delivered over the Internet can help people to stop smoking. This review found few trials reporting success rates for stopping smoking after six months or more, and those trials provided only limited evidence of long-term benefits of the Internet or web-based smoking cessation programmes. Internet intervention ...

Smokers trying to quit who get support from partners and other people are more likely to quit. Interventions intended to improve the support received from partners have not been shown to increase long-term quit rates compared to smoking cessation programmes without a partner support component. The interventions may not have successfully changed the ...

Exercise is routinely recommended as an aid to smoking cessation by specialist clinics and self-help materials. Fifteen trials have compared an exercise programme plus a smoking cessation programme, or an exercise programme alone, to a cessation programme alone or a cessation programme plus a health education programme, among smokers who were motivated ...

When giving up smoking, most people put on weight. Many smokers are concerned about this and say it may put them off making an attempt quit. Some studies show that weight gain also leads to people resuming smoking after an initially successful quit attempt. On the other hand, there are good reasons to believe that trying to limit weight gain may reduce ...

Aversion treatments pair undesirable behaviours with negative sensations. In smoking cessation, several approaches have been suggested such as rapid smoking, which requires smokers to take a puff every few seconds to make smoking unpleasant. The results of the existing trials suggest that this may be effective, but the evidence is not conclusive because ...

Controlled trials suggest that quit and win contests may help some smokers to quit, but they have little effect on community smoking rates. Fewer than one smoker in 500 quits because of the contests. Deception levels, where they can be measured, are often high. International quit and win contests are often well supported, especially in developing countries, ...