Individual behavioural counselling for smoking cessation

TLDR: Smoking cessation counselling can assist smokers to quit and fails to detect a greater effect of intensive counselling compared to brief counselling.

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Individual counselling from a smoking cessation specialist may help smokers to make a successful attempt to stop smoking OBJECTIVES: The objective of the review is to determine the effects of individual counselling SEARCH STRATEGY: We searched the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group trials register for studies with counsel* in any field Date of the most recent search: October 1998 SELECTION CRITERIA: Randomised or quasi-randomised trials with at least one treatment arm consisting of face to face individual counselling from a health care worker not involved in routine clinical care The outcome was smoking cessation at follow-up at least six months after the start of counselling DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS: Both reviewers extracted data The intervention and population, method of randomisation and completeness of follow-up were recorded MAIN RESULTS: We identified eleven trials Ten compared individual counselling to a minimal intervention, two compared two intensities of counselling, and one compared individual counselling to group therapy Individual counselling was more effective than control The odds ratio for successful smoking cessation was 155 (95% confidence interval 127 to 190) There was no evidence that more intensive counselling was more effective than brief counselling (odds ratio 117, 95% confidence interval 059 to 234) There was no evidence of a difference in effect between individual counselling and group therapy (odds ratio 133, 95% confidence interval 083 to 213) REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS: Smoking cessation counselling can assist smokers to quit