Smoking cessation advice in dental practice - dentists' and patients' perceptions

In 2006, the Australian National Tobacco campaign initiated use of graphic health warnings to increase health knowledge and encourage tobacco users to quit smoking. Objectives: To explore whether graphic health warning images (including a picture of a mouth and throat cancer) on tobacco products would elicit increased demand for smoking cessation advice in dental practice. Methods: A cross-sectional survey in private dental practices in New South Wales, Australia. Separate questionnaires were provided for dentists and for patients attending their practice. Questions comprised smoking practices, awareness of the tobacco campaign and attitudes toward smoking cessation activities in dental practice. Results: The majority (85.7%) of the dentists (n=29) and of dental patients (92.4%; n=800) recalled seeing the graphic health warnings, with the mouth and throat cancer the most commonly observed. Television was the main medium. The majority of the patients (>90%) demonstrated good knowledge about the effect of smoking on general and oral health. Nineteen percent of the patients (n=152) reported themselves as current smokers. Half of them were planning to quit within six months (51.6 %) and agreed that graphic health warnings made them more likely to quit (47.7 %). Dentists showed positive attitudes toward cessation activities, but perceived that many patients lacked motivation to quit smoking. This was reported as the main barrier to offer smoking cessation advice. Forty percent of smokers would try to quit if asked by the dentists, but only 25% expressed a preference for the dentist for cessation advice. No change in demand for smoking cessation advice from dentists was found since the launch of the National Tobacco Campaign in 2006. Conclusion: Health warning pictures seemed to increase the patients' intention to quit smoking, however it did not seem to generate more demand for smoking cessation advice from their dentists