Smoking and The Oral Cavity:A Smoker's Perspective

To assess the smoker’s perception on the effects of smoking on their general and oral health.

Smoking causes more deaths from general and oral health conditions than any other modifiable risk factor. Understanding the smoker’s perception of the effects of smoking is fundamental in theinitiation of smoking cessation programmes.

Method:

: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study. The study was carried out on smokers using two designated smoking zones located along Latema Road and Koinange Street in the Central Business District in Nairobi, Kenya. The smokers were issued with self-administered questionnaires. The data obtained was analyzed using The Statistical Package for Social Sciences Software (IBM® SPSS® Statistics version17, IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY, USA).

Result:

The respondents’ ages ranged from 20-70 years. The median age was 31 years. 89% of the smokers were educated beyond primary school level. The mean age of the first smoking experience was 19 years. Smokers’ main reasons for smoking were to relax(38%), to relieve stress (21%) and to feel independent (16%).97% of the respondents acknowledged that a smoker is more susceptible to disease compared to a non-smoker. 70% linked smoking to lung cancer while only 20% correlated smoking to oral cancer. 92% of the smokers had attempted to quit smoking, albeit unsuccessfully.

Conclusion:

Smokers are well aware of the effects of smoking on their general health. The smokers however,do not appreciate the effects of smoking on their oral health. Smoking cannot be interpreted as a choice made in presence of full information about the potential hazards of smoking. Most smokers would like to stop smoking but lack the necessary support system.