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Gary Davis, 69, smoked most of his adult life and struggled to give up cigarettes but got his final motivation after he was diagnosed with lung cancer and his surgeon told him he had to quit or he couldn't get a needed procedure. When he got home from that visit, the smoking cessation drug he had ordered was waiting for him. "I said, right, that must be a sign telling me 'Quit smoking,' " Davis said.
"And I did." Not only did it improve his health but his quick action potentially added years to his life despite the cancer. Report finds SC more likely to scan for lung cancer, but patients less likely to survive A new study found that those like Davis who quit within three months of their cancer diagnosis had a 26 percent reduction in early death compared to those who kept smoking and those quitters lived on average nearly two years longer.
As the annual Great American Smokeout Day approaches on Nov. 21, when smokers are urged to quit for at least a day, there is new evidence it has a powerful effect on health even for cancer patients. It also provides fresh evidence that doctors and cancer centers need to redouble efforts to help their patients give up the habit.
The study in JAMA Oncology looked at more than 4,500 current smokers who received a cancer diagnosis at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and then were also referred to smoking cessation therapy, between January 2006 and March 2022. The vast majority of those who were able to quit within six months of diagnosis lived nearly two years longer than those who continued to smoke and longer than those who quit later. "Quitting smoking after a cancer diagnosis can really improve survival across cancer as a whole, and the earlier a person quits in their journey as a cancer survivor, the better," said Dr.
Graham Warren, vice chair for research in Radiation Oncology at the Medical University of South Carolina Hollings Cancer Center and senior author on the study. Dr. Graham Warren, professor and Mary M.
Gilbreth Endowed Chair of Clinical Oncology at Medical University of South Carolina Hollings Cancer Center. There is also a danger to not quitting, he said. Continuing to smoke increases the chance that the cancer treatment will fail by about 60 percent, he said.
Cigarette smoke contains chemicals that activate cancer pathways and can increase resistance to treatments like radiation therapy or chemotherapy. "If you remove cigarette smoke, those tumors can become more responsive to treatment," Warren said. "So biologically, it has an effect on how well our traditional cancer treatments work.
" Despite this evidence, it has been a struggle over the years to convince clinicians, cancer centers and patients that quitting smoking should be a priority, he said. People know smoking leads to cancer but after the diagnosis, they might think it doesn't matter anymore and "that assumption is wrong," Warren said. Brain stimulation let Johns Island man, many others quit smoking, but insurance says no In 2017, for instance, nearly one in five survivors of a smoking-related cancer were still smoking , according to the National Health Interview Survey.
Recognizing that not enough cancer patients were getting help quitting, that same year the National Cancer Institute launched the Cancer Center Cessation Initiative. It was part of the expansive Cancer Moonshot program begun in 2016 and the smoking cessation initiative now includes 52 cancer centers across the country, the NCI said. Warren and others have been pushing centers to include coordinated smoking cessation efforts for years.
The American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer has a program to encourage treatment centers to ask patients about smoking status and 730 now have a program in place to do that and enhance follow-up. But only a quarter of those programs had a cessation expert or counselor as part of their cancer clinical team, the commission reported in 2023. Addressing smoking in cancer now reaches across the boarder.
The Canadian Partnership Against Cancer has worked to increase smoking cessation programs at cancer centers from 26 percent in 2016 to 95 percent in 2022, Warren said. The JAMA study was conducted at MD Anderson because of its comprehensive smoking cessation program and its long and careful tracking of those patients. But MUSC also has a robust program developed over the last decade that reaches out not just to cancer patients but also hospitalized patients, Warren said.
It provides patients help in a number of ways: patients can receive in-person counseling at the bedside or they can receive a referral to smoking cessation counselors, they can receive pharmaceutical aid or get help through a quit line, he said. It has been very successful and has been beneficial to the health system as well, Warren said. An analysis found the program has reduced readmissions and also the cost of admissions to the hospital as well, he said.
"I'm very proud of the work we do here," Warren said. MUSC studies whether vape flavors to help adult smokers quit outweigh risk to enticing kids The work also shows that just quitting smoking on its own could be considered a cancer therapy because of its added survival benefit, with no downside to the patient. "Quitting smoking is probably one of the cheapest and most effective ways to improve survival and cancer treatment with no added toxicity," Warren said.
Davis, the lung cancer patient, also benefited from a conscientious doctor. Because Davis worked on commercial HVAC systems, his physician worried about his exposure to asbestos and other toxic chemicals as well as his smoking, and insisted on a chest x-ray each year. That later turned into a CT scan each year.
It fits in with national guidelines that call for a low-dose CT scan each year for those ages 50-80 with a 20-year pack history, or a pack a day for 20 years, who are current smokers or who have quit within the last 15 years. Gary Davis and his wife, Susan, at their home in Surfside Beach, S.C.
Two years ago, Davis had a scan that showed "little spots" on his lower right lung, which was removed. "That's how I found it so early," he said. Quitting smoking soon after will likely help his survival.
But just being free from cigarettes is making a difference for him now. "You do start feeling better," Davis said. "I didn't realize how bad it made me feel, until I quit smoking.
I do highly recommend it.".
