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Notes:
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The main objective ofthis paper is to present a new program thatfacilitates the management
of people who want to quit smoking, implemented through an e-treatment software called
S-PC (Smoker Patient Control). S-PC is a web-based application that manages groups of
patients, provides a bidirectional communication through mobile text messages and e-mails
between patients and clinicians and offers advice and control to keep track of the patients
and their status.
A total of 229 patients were enrolled in the study, randomly divided into two groups,
although some variables were tested to ensure that there were no significant differences
between the groups that could have an impact on the outcome of the treatment. There
were no significant differences between the two groups regarding the ratio/number of
males/females, tobacco dependence, co-oximetry, average cigarette consumption, current
age and age when smoking started. The first group was made up of 104 patients (45.4% of
the total) and followed a treatment that incorporated the S-PC tool, while the second one
had 125 patients without the S-PC tool. S-PC was evaluated for its effectiveness at assisting
the patients to give up smoking, and its effect on clinician time management.
74% of the S-PC group completed the treatment without relapses and remained abstinent
three months after the completion of the treatment, understanding abstinence as being
continuous (with no relapses allowed and co-oximetry below 1 ppm) from the day of stopping.
In contrast only 45.6% of the No S-PC group completed the treatment without relapses
and remained abstinent three months after completion of the treatment. The rate of admittance
to the program has doubled in one year and patients went from having to wait for 3
months to be immediately admitted into the program.
This work was supported by the MEyC-Spain under contracts BFU2010-17704 and TIN2011-28689-C02-02, by Generalitat de Catalunya, through research groups 2009SGR809 and 2009SGR145 and the CUR of DIUE of GENCAT, and by the European Social Fund. |
