Cochrane: Medications that help people to stop smoking such as nicotine replacement therapy
(NRT) are safe and effective treatments for smoking cessation. However,
people often do not take the medication they are prescribed as they
should.
In the current review, we examined whether there are effective approaches to increasing adherence to these treatments, which should improve smokers' chances of quitting. These approaches, or interventions, typically involve providing additional information about the medication and helping people to overcome any problems they have in taking it as prescribed.
A systematic search located eight studies of interventions to improve adherence, involving 3336 participants. Five studies assessed whether or not participants achieved a specified satisfactory level of medication taking, with statistical combination of the results suggesting that the interventions led to modest improvements. Four studies assessed how much medication was taken, finding a small effect that may be due to chance. There was also some evidence that interventions to increase adherence to medication led to modest improvements in quitting smoking. The evidence that was included in the review was considered to be of low-to-moderate quality, suggesting that further research is necessary if we want to increase our confidence in these results.
In summary, there is some evidence that interventions that devote special attention to improving adherence to smoking cessation medication can increase this, though the evidence is not strong and is limited in both quality and quantity. There is also some evidence that these approaches improve the chances of quitting smoking but again this is relatively weak.
In the current review, we examined whether there are effective approaches to increasing adherence to these treatments, which should improve smokers' chances of quitting. These approaches, or interventions, typically involve providing additional information about the medication and helping people to overcome any problems they have in taking it as prescribed.
A systematic search located eight studies of interventions to improve adherence, involving 3336 participants. Five studies assessed whether or not participants achieved a specified satisfactory level of medication taking, with statistical combination of the results suggesting that the interventions led to modest improvements. Four studies assessed how much medication was taken, finding a small effect that may be due to chance. There was also some evidence that interventions to increase adherence to medication led to modest improvements in quitting smoking. The evidence that was included in the review was considered to be of low-to-moderate quality, suggesting that further research is necessary if we want to increase our confidence in these results.
In summary, there is some evidence that interventions that devote special attention to improving adherence to smoking cessation medication can increase this, though the evidence is not strong and is limited in both quality and quantity. There is also some evidence that these approaches improve the chances of quitting smoking but again this is relatively weak.
Authors' conclusions:
There is some evidence that
interventions that devote special attention to improving adherence to
smoking cessation medication through providing information and
facilitating problem-solving can improve adherence, though the evidence
for this is not strong and is limited in both quality and quantity.
There is some evidence that such interventions improve the chances of
achieving abstinence but again the evidence for this is relatively weak.