Nicotine replacement therapy sampling for smoking cessation within primary care: results from a pragmatic cluster randomized clinical trial.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

Within the context of busy clinical settings, health-care providers need practical, evidence-based options to engage smokers in quitting.

Sampling of nicotine replacement therapy [i.e. provision of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT starter kits)] is a brief, pragmatic strategy to address this need.

The researchers aimed to compare the effects of NRT sampling plus standard care (SC), relative to SC alone, provided by primary care providers during routine clinic visits.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized study.

The participants were allocated by chance, so the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Twenty-two primary care clinics in South Carolina, USA.

Interventions were provider-delivered SC (n = 652, 12 clinics) cessation advice or SC + a 2-week supply of both nicotine patch and lozenge, with minimal instructions on use (n = 593; 10 clinics).

The primary outcome was 7-day point prevalence smoking abstinence at 6-month follow-up, using intent-to-treat.

Additional outcomes included NRT use and quit attempts, assessed at 1, 3 and 6 months following baseline.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Ambulatory Care, Behavior Therapy, Prevalence, Primary Health Care, Smokers, Smoking Cessation and South Carolina.

Author keywords: Cessation induction, nicotine replacement therapy, pragmatic clinical trial and primary care.

What This Means in Plain Language

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

Its findings take up roughly 4 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2020 (Addiction (Abingdon, England)), a journal based in England.

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