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Nothing persuades a smoker to rethink the smoking habit like a diagnosis of smoking-related illness, but, even then, many remain unable or unwilling to quit. Canadian researchers evaluated the efficacy of an intensive smoking-cessation counseling program in which patients were enrolled directly from their hospital beds on a single hospital's cardiac service during an 18-month period.
The 135 participants had been admitted with diagnosed myocardial infarctions or to receive coronary-artery bypass grafts. In the intensive-intervention group, each person received an hour-long bedside session, a variety of take-home audiovisual materials, and several telephone follow-up sessions with a nurse during the 2 months after hospital discharge; the othe…