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Kicking the habit by phone?

Can a phone call to get help in quitting smoking actually work?

A study in the May issue of The Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) indicates that it can.

Citing research conducted by scientists from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, a news release from the American Dental Association says that eight Minnesota dental practices chosen at random agreed to provide patients who smoked cigarettes with either a brief counselling session on the importance of not smoking or a referral to a telephone "quitline" the researchers had set up.

In all, 60 patients were told about the telephone counselling service and 22 were given only a brief counselling session.

After six months, both methods appeared to have a positive effect. Twenty-five percent of the patients in the telephone group and more than 27 percent of the patients in the counselling group had "abstained from tobacco use," the news release says. – (HealthDayNews)

Read more:
Stop smoking Centre

May 2007

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