Nicotine patches in general practice.

Prescription of transdermal nicotine patches for smoking cessation in general practice: evaluation of cost-effectiveness.

BACKGROUND The 1998 UK government White Paper Smoking Kills emphasises that normal practice should be for general practitioners (GPs), practice nurses, and others to offer advice and support to smokers in their efforts to stop. However, GPs are not allowed to write NHS prescriptions for nicotine-replacement therapy, even though this is the only effective pharmaceutical treatment available in th...

Targeting heavy smokers in general practice: randomised controlled trial of transdermal nicotine patches.

OBJECTIVES (a) To evaluate the efficacy of transdermal nicotine patches as an aid to stopping smoking when used as an adjunct to brief advice and support in a general practice setting; (b) to see whether an increase in nicotine patch dosage enhances the rate of initial cessation. DESIGN Randomised double blind placebo controlled parallel group study with one year of follow up. SETTING 30 ge...

Placebo controlled trial of nicotine chewing gum in general practice.

Of 2110 adult cigarette smokers originally recruited to a study of the effect of antismoking advice in general practice, 429 who reported at follow up after one year that they had tried unsuccessfully to stop smoking were offered "a special antismoking chewing gum," either nicotine gum or a placebo gum, in a double blind study. Of 200 who were willing to try the gum, 101 were randomly allocated...

Risk of acute first myocardial infarction and use of nicotine patches in a general population.

OBJECTIVES To determine if nicotine patches, both as prescribed and used over-the-counter, increase the risk of first myocardial infarction (MI). BACKGROUND Although nicotine patches improve smoking cessation rates, case reports have raised the hypothesis that they may increase the risk of MI. METHODS A population-based case-control study among 68 hospitals in an eight-county region surroun...

Side effects of transdermal nicotine patches.