This study is designed to determine whether the effectiveness of a self-help smoking cessation treatment can be improved by matching cigarette smokers, on the basis of nicotine dependence, to programs which differ in their inclusion of nicotine chewing gum, a pharmacologic nicotine dependence-based treatment. A sample of 200 smokers, referred by physicians, will be screened initially to determine degree of tobacco dependence, utilizing the Fagerstrom Tolerance Questionnaire (FTQ). An equal number of high (FTQ greater than 7) and low (FTQ less than 6) nicotine dependent subjects will be assigned randomly to a self-help treatment, with or without nicotine gum. This will yield a fourfold classification, with 50 subjects per cell. The three week self-help treatment is based on materials available from the American Lung Association. For subjects receiving nicotine gum, a four month prescription will be provided. Self-reported smoking outcomes, verified biochemically, will be assessed at six and twelve months after treatment. It is hypothesized that both high and low dependent participants who are matched to appropriate dependence and non-dependence-based treatments, respectively, will display superior outcomes. The power of the FTQ as a screening instrument will also be determined retrospectively by examining its relation to other potential predictors of smoking outcome, including individual items on the FTQ, pre-treatment cotinine levels and smoking rate. The results of this study will have implications for the screeing and treatment of outpatient cigarette smokers in physicians' offices.
| Niaura, R; Goldstein, M G; Abrams, D B (1994) Matching high- and low-dependence smokers to self-help treatment with or without nicotine replacement. Prev Med 23:70-7 |
