Dental Hygienists' Delivery of Smoking Cessation Advice: 6-month Outcomes

Methods: One hundred and eighteen new patients were recruited into a randomised controlled smoking cessation trial. Dental hygienists offered those patients allocated to the intervention group smoking cessation advice based on the 5As and free nicotine replacement therapy, in addition to their periodontal treatment. The patients in the control group were only given brief advice at point of recruitment. At baseline, all participants were asked to complete questionnaires assessing their smoking habits and readiness to quit, and provided a salivary sample for cotinine analysis and an exhaled air sample for carbon monoxide analysis. Follow-up information was available for 71 (61%) of the participants at 6 months.

Results: The mean age of the participants at recruitment was 41 (SD 10) years; 70% of the cohort was female. In the intervention group, 10.2% of the participants quit, compared with 5.3% of the control group (point prevalence rates, biochemically validated) (p=0.530). All successful quitters had used some form of biochemical support. Amongst those continuing to smoke, a significantly greater proportion of participants in the intervention group had had a quit attempt in the last 3 months compared to the control group (83% vs 56%, p=0.033). Similarly, a significantly greater proportion of participants in the intervention group had a quit attempt of at least 1 week compared to the control group (47% vs 16%, p=0.018).

Conclusion: Trained dental hygienists, in a hospital setting, can deliver smoking cessation advice, which results in quit rates of similar levels to other health professionals in comparable situations. Further work is needed to determine the applicability and transferability of this work to a dental primary care setting.