Is telephone counselling a useful addition to physician advice and nicotine replacement therapy in helping patients to stop smoking? A randomized controlled trial.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 396 volunteers taking part.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Usual care involved the receipt of physician advice on 3 occasions, self-help materials and 12 weeks of nicotine replacement therapy.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized.

Because people in this Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

The trial was conducted at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute.

Telephone counselling was provided by a nurse at 2, 6 and 13 weeks after the target quit date.

Point-prevalent quit rates were determined at 52 weeks after the target quit date.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Counseling, Nicotine, Nicotinic Agonists, Nurses, Ontario, Sex Factors and Smoking Cessation.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in 396 volunteers.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Results are reported in around 5 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 1999 (CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne), a journal based in Canada.

More context: the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) compound page, all human trials.