A comparison of measures used to assess effectiveness of the transdermal nicotine patch at 1 year.

This study examines outcome measures of abstinence among studies reporting 12-month outcomes of the nicotine transdermal patch using different measures of effectiveness. This was achieved by reviewing published randomized controlled studies reporting 1-year abstinence rates of the nicotine transdermal patch. Comparisons are made across studies of three outcome measures used to report abstinence: point prevalence, continuous, and prolonged abstinence. Studies that measured outcome in terms of continuous and prolonged abstinence at 1 year showed double the effect for the active patch compared to placebo; however, this difference was not always apparent in those studies using point prevalence as the outcome measure.