Telling Smokers Their Lung Age Increases Their Likelihood of Quitting

The authors of a Cochrane review concluded that providing smokers with results of biomedical risk assessments, such as exhaled carbon monoxide levels and spirometry results, does not raise smoking cessation rates (Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2005; 4:CD004705). Would communicating spirometry results in terms of “lung age” be better? To find out, U.K. investigators randomized 561 smokers (age, ≥35; average cigarettes smoked, 17 daily) to receive their spirometry results expressed as lung age (the age of a healthy person with the same result) or expressed as the raw number for FEV₁ without further explanation. All participants were advised to quit smoking and were given contact information for smoking cessation clinics.

At 1 year, the smoking ce…