Final Recommendation Statement
Tobacco Use and Tobacco-Caused Disease: Counseling, 2003
November 01, 2003
Recommendations made by the USPSTF are independent of the U.S. government. They should not be construed as an official position of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
This Recommendation is out of date
It has been replaced by the following: Tobacco Use in Children and Adolescents: Primary Care Interventions (2020) Tobacco Smoking Cessation in Adults, Including Pregnant Persons: Interventions (2021)
- Update in Progress for Tobacco and Nicotine Use Prevention and Cessation in Children and Adolescents: Primary Care Interventions
Recommendation Summary
| Population | Recommendation | Grade |
|---|---|---|
| All adults | The USPSTF strongly recommends that clinicians screen all adults for tobacco use and provide tobacco cessation interventions for those who use tobacco products. Rationale: Rationale: The USPSTF found good evidence that brief smoking cessation interventions, including screening, brief behavioral counseling (less than 3 minutes), and pharmacotherapy delivered in primary care settings, are effective in increasing the proportion of smokers who successfully quit smoking and remain abstinent after 1 year. Although most smoking cessation trials do not provide direct evidence of health benefits, the USPSTF found good evidence that smoking cessation lowers the risk for heart disease, stroke, and lung disease. The USPSTF concluded that there is good indirect evidence that even small increases in the quit rates from tobacco cessation counseling would produce important health benefits, and that the benefits of counseling interventions substantially outweigh any potential harms. | A |
| All pregnant women | The USPSTF strongly recommends that clinicians screen all pregnant women for tobacco use and provide augmented pregnancy-tailored counseling to those who smoke. Rationale: The USPSTF found good evidence that extended or augmented smoking cessation counseling (5-15 minutes) using messages and self-help materials tailored for pregnant smokers, compared with brief generic counseling interventions alone, substantially increases abstinence rates during pregnancy, and leads to increased birth weights. Although relapse rates are high in the post-partum period, the USPSTF concluded that reducing smoking during pregnancy is likely to have substantial health benefits for both the baby and the expectant mother. The USPSTF concluded that the benefits of smoking cessation counseling outweigh any potential harms. | A |
| Children and adolescents | The USPSTF concludes that the evidence is insufficient to recommend for or against routine screening for tobacco use or interventions to prevent and treat tobacco use and dependence among children or adolescents. Rationale: The USPSTF found limited evidence that screening and counseling children and adolescents in the primary care setting are effective in either preventing initiation or promoting cessation of tobacco use. As a result, the USPSTF could not determine the balance of benefits and harms of tobacco prevention or cessation interventions in the clinical setting for children or adolescents. | I |
Additional Information
Recommendation Information
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Full Recommendation:
Recommendations made by the USPSTF are independent of the U.S. government. They should not be construed as an official position of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
This statement summarizes the current U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendation on counseling to prevent tobacco use and tobacco-caused disease and the supporting scientific evidence, and updates the 1996 recommendation contained in the Guide to Clinical Preventive Services, Second Edition.
- Brief tobacco cessation counseling interventions, including screening, brief counseling (3 minutes or less), and/or pharmacotherapy, have proven to increase tobacco abstinence rates, although there is a dose-response relationship between quit rates and the intensity of counseling. Effective interventions may be delivered by a variety of primary care clinicians.
- The "5-A" behavioral counseling framework provides a useful strategy for engaging patients in smoking cessation discussions:
- Ask about tobacco use.
- Advise to quit through clear personalized messages.
- Assess willingness to quit.
- Assist to quit.
- Arrange followup and support.
Helpful aspects of counseling include providing problem-solving guidance for smokers to develop a plan to quit and to overcome common barriers to quitting and providing social support within and outside of treatment. Common practices that complement this framework include motivational interviewing, the 5 R's used to treat tobacco use (relevance, risks, rewards, roadblocks, repetition), assessing readiness to change, and more intensive counseling and/or referrals for quitters needing extra help.1-3 Telephone "quit lines" have also been found to be an effective adjunct to counseling or medical therapy.4
Clinics that implement screening systems designed to regularly identify and document a patient's tobacco use status increased their rates of clinician intervention, although there is limited evidence for the impact of screening systems on tobacco cessation rates.5 - FDA-approved pharmacotherapy that has been identified as safe and effective for treating tobacco dependence includes several forms of nicotine replacement therapy (i.e., nicotine gum, nicotine transdermal patches, nicotine inhaler, and nicotine nasal spray) and sustained-release bupropion. Other medications, including clonidine and nortriptyline, have been found to be efficacious and may be considered.
- Augmented pregnancy-tailored counseling (e.g., 5-15 minutes) and self-help materials are recommended for pregnant smokers, as brief interventions are less effective in this population. There is limited evidence to evaluate the safety or efficacy of pharmacotherapy during pregnancy. Tobacco cessation at any point during pregnancy can yield important health benefits for the mother and the baby, but there are limited data about the optimal timing or frequency of counseling interventions during pregnancy.
- There is little evidence addressing the effectiveness of screening and counseling children or adolescents to prevent the initiation of tobacco use and to promote its cessation in a primary care setting, but clinicians may use their discretion in conducting tobacco-related discussions with this population, since the majority of adult smokers begin tobacco use as children or adolescents.
The Public Health Service guideline can be accessed at: https://www.surgeongeneral.gov/tobacco/smokesum.htm. Tobacco-related recommendations from the CDC Guide to Community Preventive Services can be accessed at: https://www.thecommunityguide.org/tobacco.
Policies of the American Academy of Family Physicians can be accessed at: https://www.aafp.org/x7112.xml. Recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics relating to tobacco can be accessed at: https://www.aap.org/policy/re0041.html, https://www.aap.org/policy/re9716.html, and https://www.aap.org/policy/re9801.html. Recommendations of the Canadian Task Force can be accessed at: https://www.ctfphc.org
Members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force* are Alfred O. Berg, M.D., M.P.H., Chair, USPSTF (Professor and Chair, Department of Family Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA); Janet D. Allan, Ph.D., R.N., C.S., F.A.A.N., Vice-chair, USPSTF (Dean, School of Nursing, University of Maryland Baltimore, Baltimore, MD); Paul Frame, M.D. (Tri-County Family Medicine, Cohocton, NY, and Clinical Professor of Family Medicine, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY); Charles J. Homer, M.D., M.P.H. (Executive Director, National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality, Boston, MA); Mark S. Johnson, M.D., M.P.H. (Professor of Family Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ); Jonathan D. Klein, M.D., M.P.H. (Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of Rochester School of Medicine, Rochester, NY); Tracy A. Lieu, M.D., M.P.H. (Associate Professor, Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA); C. Tracy Orleans, Ph.D. (Senior Scientist and Senior Program Officer, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, NJ); Jeffrey F. Peipert, M.D., M.P.H. (Director of Research, Women and Infants' Hospital, Providence, RI); Nola J. Pender, Ph.D., R.N., F.A.A.N. (Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI); Albert L. Siu, M.D., M.S.P.H. (Professor of Medicine, Chief of Division of General Internal Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY); Steven M. Teutsch, M.D., M.P.H. (Senior Director, Outcomes Research and Management, Merck & Company, Inc., West Point, PA); Carolyn Westhoff, M.D., M.Sc. (Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Professor of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY); and Steven H. Woolf, M.D., M.P.H. (Professor, Department of Family Practice and Department of Preventive and Community Medicine and Director of Research Department of Family Practice, Virginia Commonwealth University, Fairfax, VA).
* Member of the USPSTF at the time this recommendation was finalized. For a list of current Task Force members, go to https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/about-uspstf/current-members.
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