> No place for hypnotherapy and acupuncture in an evidence based NHS Stop Smoking Service

> NHS Stop Smoking Services are effective and equally so among lower as high social grade smokers

> Smoking in pregnancy: what midwives do and what women say

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Press release information for UKNSCC 2008

Strict embargo: 00.01hrs
Monday June 30, 2008

No place for hypnotherapy and acupuncture in an evidence based NHS Stop Smoking Service

Smokers wishing to quit would be wasting their money if they use complementary therapies such as hypnotherapy or acupuncture – smoking cessation experts claim today (Monday, June 30).

This and other issues around the most effective ways to help smokers quit will be discussed at the UK National Smoking Cessation Conference in Birmingham on 30 June & 1 July 2008.

Dr Andy McEwen, assistant director of tobacco studies at Cancer Research UK’s Health Behaviour Research Centre and programme director for the conference, said: “There is no good research evidence to show that hypnotherapy or acupuncture increase a persons chance of stopping smoking. You may hear people who are convinced that these, or other complementary therapies, helped them stop smoking – but there is no way of knowing whether they would have stopped anyway.”

“Anyone who is ready to quit would be more successful by getting in contact with their local NHS Stop Smoking Service for specialist advice and treatment. There is no easy way to stop smoking and if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

Conference delegates will be debating the motion that ‘This house believes that hypnotherapy and acupuncture should be treatments provided by NHS Stop Smoking Services’.

It is likely that the motion will be defeated if findings from the first Annual Smoking Cessation Practitioner Survey are an indication of what those in the field believe. An online survey of nearly 500 specialists working in NHS Stop Smoking Services found that 94 per cent would not recommend hypnotherapy, and 94 per cent would not recommend acupuncture, to smokers wanting to quit.

Smokers should beware of any treatment that claims to have a higher than 50 per cent short-term (i.e. four weeks after quitting) or 20 per cent long-term (i.e. after six months) success rate.

ENDS

For media enquiries please contact Andrew Preston on 07768 441796

References:

1. Abbot NC, Stead LF, White AR, Barnes J. Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 1998, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD001008. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD001008.
2. White AR, Rampes H, Campbell JL. Acupuncture and related interventions for smoking cessation. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2006, Issue 1. Art. No.: CD000009. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD000009.pub2.

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Annual Smoking Cessation Practitioner (SCP) Survey information:

Online survey open to all Smoking Cessation Practitioners working in NHS Stop Smoking Services and carried out in May and June 2008. Survey was run by Dr Andy McEwen of the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre, University College London.

497 SCP responded to the survey. The full results of the Annual SCP Survey will be posted on the Smoking Cessation Research Network (SCSRN) website (www.scsrn.org) in August.

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UKNSCC 2008 Debate information:
Proposing: Maggie Chapman, Fellow of the British Society of Clinical Hypnosis
Amanda Shayle, Chairman of The Acupuncture Society and Research and Development, College of Chinese Medicine

Opposing: Paul Aveyard, NIHR Career Scientist, Department of Primary Care and General Practice, University of Birmingham, UK
Darcy Brown, Health Improvement Lead for Tobacco Control and Smoking Cessation, Darlington and Durham Dales PDA, UK

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Press release information for UKNSCC 2008

NHS Stop Smoking Services are effective and equally so among lower as high social grade smokers

Professor Robert West
Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre
Epidemiology & Public Health
University College London

Findings from a new national survey of 1724 adults show that treatment from NHS Stop Smoking Services triples smokers’ chances of quitting successfully.

The sample were smokers a year ago, tried to stop in the past year and used medication to help them stop. Those smokers who also used behavioural support from the NHS Stop Smoking Services were three times more likely to still not be smoking than those who used medication (usually nicotine replacement therapy) alone.

The effect was the same in adults from social grade E (low paid manual and unemployed) as AB (high level professional and managerial).

The findings show that the NHS Stop Smoking Services are matching up to expectations from clinical trials and delivering high quality support to hundreds of thousands of smokers each year. The task now is to get the news out so that more smokers use these life-saving services.

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Survey information:
This ongoing monthly cohort survey (The Smoking Toolkit Study) is carried out by BMRB on behalf of Professor Robert West of the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre, University College London. For more information see: www.smokinginengland.info

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Press release information for UKNSCC 2008

Smoking in pregnancy: what midwives do and what women say

Dr Linda Bauld
Reader in Social Policy
University of Bath and UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies

The Bath press office contact is: press@bath.ac.uk

Smoking in pregnancy harms women and children. Despite this, a third of mothers (33%) in the UK smoked in the 12 months before or during their pregnancy. Of these mothers, about half (48%) gave up at some point before the birth, but one in six (17%) continued to smoke throughout their pregnancy¹. These smoking rates are higher than in many other developed countries.

Of equal concern is the fact that between 2000 and 2005, although overall recorded rates of smoking in pregnancy have declined, inequalities in smoking have widened. The proportion of mothers in managerial or professional occupations who smoked before or during pregnancy decreased from 22% in 2000 to 20% in 2005, but the proportion of mothers in routine and manual groups who smoked rose from 46% to 48% in the same period¹.

The reasons why women continue to smoke during pregnancy are complex and relate to factors common to all smokers (such as addiction, habit and enjoyment of smoking) as well as those specific to pregnancy. Barriers to quitting in pregnancy include fear of weight gain, fear of increased stress and withdrawal symptoms, lack of support from a smoking partner or family member, denial of the risks to the baby and resistance to or lack of access to smoking cessation services. However, pregnancy also provides a unique opportunity when smokers are receptive to quitting and many women do quit. The chances of successful cessation can be increased if midwives and other health professionals identify pregnant smokers and advise them to stop as well as informing them about how to access specialist smoking in pregnancy services and nicotine replacement therapy, which is now licensed for use in pregnancy.

More needs to be done to reduce rates of smoking in pregnancy. The Department of Health’s current consultation on the future of tobacco control provides an opportunity for organizations and the public to come forward with suggestions. Future developments need to focus on encouraging more women to access support to stop through: better mechanisms for identifying and recording smoking in pregnancy; better and more systematic systems for referral to specialist support; more consistent availability and delivery of specialist services throughout the country; improved access to NRT; and support for services and researchers to trial innovative methods to help women to quit. This is essential not only to reduce smoking in pregnancy but also to reduce the harm to infants caused by second hand smoke exposure in the home and to maximize the chances that children will grow up in a nonsmoking household, therefore reducing the risk that they will become the smokers of the future.

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1 Information Centre (2007) Infant Feeding Survey 2005, Information Centre for Health and Social Care, Leeds. http://www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/health-and-lifestyles-relatedsurveys/ infant-feeding-survey/infant-feeding-survey-2005

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Smoking in pregnancy: what midwives do and what women say

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