Tobacco cessation advice by dental students at oral health campaign

Introduction: Arden G. Christen was the one to first mention the dentist's role in helping patients to stop smoking in 1970. Among the health care professionals dental team have a greater opportunity to advise their patients to stop smoking. Providing a brief intervention by dentist or health care professional has been recognized as one the cost-effective method of smoking cessation. Materials and Methods: Patients attending a three day free dental screening campaign were asked about their smoking status and interested candidates who wanted to quit smoking were given the advice. A 4As approach was used to record the current smoking status and willingness to quit was recorded. A brief advice (five to ten minutes) and encouragement to stop smoking was given along with explanation of adverse oral health effects of smoking with the help of posters. Results: 45 out of 419 who attended free dental campaign are smokers. 84.4 % of the smokers (all males) have shown willingness to quit and underwent the brief tobacco cessation advice. More than fifty percent of them are smokers for 10 years or more. 68.4% of them have made previous quit attempts and mostly the reason being health concern. More than a quarter (26.4%) of them have said that they were not aware of adverse effects of smoking while many suggested that counseling would help them quit. Conclusion: Relatively small populations of smokers who have indicated high interest in quitting have utilized the service. Form the public health education point of view advertising the ill effects of smoking to population is still required and availability of counseling services to the interested population has to be increased. Keywords: smoking cessation, dental students