Background: As the number of cancer survivors increases, the assessment and intervention for smoking among survivors are increasingly important.
Objective: This study examined the extent to which cancer survivors reported being asked and advised about smoking by health-care providers and their use of smoking cessation treatments during quit attempts.
Design: The data were drawn from the 2005 National Health Interview Survey, an annual health survey of US adults.
Participants: The participants were 1,825 individuals who reported being diagnosed with cancer at least 1 year previously and provided data regarding their current smoking status.
Measurements: Participants completed items assessing demographics, health and health-care factors, and smoking-related variables.
Main results: More than three-quarters of participants (81.0%) reported that their smoking status was known by a health-care provider. Among current smokers (17.6%) who visited a health-care provider in the past year, 72.2% reported being advised to quit smoking by a provider. Factors associated with a higher rate of receiving advice to quit included greater cigarette consumption (P=0.008), more medical comorbidities (P= 0.001), high psychological distress (P= 0.003), and lack of health-care insurance (P = 0.03). Among current smokers who tried to quit in the last year, 33.5% used pharmacotherapy cessation treatment and 3.8% used an evidence-based behavioral treatment.
Conclusions: This study reveals considerable missed opportunities for health-care providers to advise cancer survivors about smoking and provide evidence-based interventions. Systematic efforts are needed to increase the provision of smoking cessation advice and use of cessation treatments among cancer survivors.