Little Help For Smokers With Lung Cancer

Posted: April 24, 2014 | tobacco | cigarettes, lunch cancer, smoking, tobacco | 0 Comments

According to a new study, most lung cancer patients who acquire the disease thanks to smoking aren’t offered help in quitting as part of their treatment. Only one-third of doctors currently have the knowledge and background to offer cessation help but that number doesn’t look to be going up any time soon.

The Journal of Thoracic Oncology found that 90% of lung cancer patients are asked about their smoking habit when diagnosed and 80% are advised to quit immediately. The problem is, only about 40% of patients are actually brought up to speed on their medical options for quitting. Why such a low number? That’s the scary part…

The biggest reason why most doctors don’t offer cessation help is that they don’t believe the smoker, even with lung cancer, will actually quit smoking. In short: they don’t want to waste their time.

Of the 1507 doctors surveyed, 58% stated that they are pessimistic about their patients’ ability to quit while 67% said that they were concerned about patients resisting help even if it were offered to them. This means that lung cancer specialists have seen enough smokers come and go and continue to smoke despite having a life threatening illness to the point were their professional opinion is that the majority of smokers cant quit even when their life is on the line. That really says something about just how strong the addiction to smoking is.

Granted, there is a need for an increased amount of education for doctors as it pertains to cessation. Despite that fact that many doctors don’t have a lot of hope for smokers with lung cancer, they are still patients and should (at least) be given the chance to help their odds of survival. That way, the patient can decide whether or not to help his or her own cause. For the time being, however, there is a large unavailability of cessation help to smokers with lung cancer.