Trends in the uptake and delivery of smoking cessation services to smokers in Great Britain

摘要

Smoking kills more people than any other avoidable factor in the UK, and smoking cessation interventions are among the most cost effective treatments in medicine. Guidelines recommending routine implementation of smoking ascertainment and cessation in clinical practice were first published in the UK in 1998, and in the same year the UK government allocated funding to establish specialist smoking cessation services throughout the National Health Service. Since 2001 the antismoking drug bupropion and all nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products have been available on NHS prescription, and their use supported by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. The strong message of these policy developments is that advising smokers to quit, and providing behavioural and therapeutic cessation support, should by now be a standard component of medical practice. The recent Omnibus survey of Great Britain provides an opportunity to discover if this is indeed the case.