Heart attack patients don’t adhere to smoking cessation prescriptions

In a new study, researchers at Duke University set out to explore how many patients who regularly smoke and are hospitalized for a heart attack receive cessation medications at discharge.

The research, published in JAMA Cardiology, is based on data from a MI registry collected from April 2007 to December 2013. The study was led by Neha J. Pagidipati, MD, an assistant professor at Duke.

Her study explored patient factors associated with early prescription smoking cessation medication use, including drugs like bupropion and varenicline. More than 9,100 participants were in the study with a median age of 70.

Results showed that 97 percent of patients received smoking cessation counseling during their hospitalization, but that only about 7 percent of patients who smoked used a prescription cessation medication within 90 days after being discharged.

Even among those who did use cessation medication, they didn’t use it properly. The median duration of use was 6.2 weeks for bupropion and 4.3 weeks for varenicline, though they are both recommended to be used for 12 weeks.

The authors acknowledge that limitations of the study included a lack of data about actual prescription rates, smoking cessation rate post-heart attack and reasons for why patients may have stopped using the prescribed medication.

"Because individuals who successfully quit smoking do so most frequently in the immediate post-MI period, current practices indicate a missed opportunity for smoking cessation and secondary prevention efforts," the authors wrote in the study.