Effects of additional prescription of herbal medicines on outpatient smoking-cessation therapy (2)

Abstract<br> Chinese herbal remedies have been reported to be effective for smoking cessation, but there have been few studies on the association between the concomitant use of smoking-cessation aids and Chinese herbal medicines and success in smoking cessation. We treated patients with complaints that occurred over the course of treatment for nicotine dependence by the concomitant use of Chinese herbal medicines and previously reported marked improvements in the smoking-cessation rate.1) In the present study, we evaluated whether similar effects can be obtained in a larger number of patients and with a wider variety of Chinese herbal medicines. The primary factor was new prescriptions of Chinese herbal medicines in the smoking-cessation clinic, the primary endpoint was the smoking-cessation success rate after 12 weeks, and the moderating variables were age, sex, Brinkman index, Fagerstrom test for nicotine dependence (FTND), and the number of hospital visits. Smoking cessation was successful in 38 (82.6%) of the 46 patients treated with the concomitant use of Chinese herbal medicines and 130 (67.4%) of the 193 patients treated without Chinese herbal medicines, with a significantly higher success rate in the first group (P=0.048). On multivariate analysis, the success rate was significantly correlated with the number of hospital revisits alone (P=0.000), and no significant correlation was observed between the use of Chinese herbal medicines and smoking-cessation success rate (P=0.34). In the present study, the evaluation involved a larger number of patients compared with the previous study, but the results were the same: The smoking-cessation success rate was significantly improved in the group treated with Chinese herbal medicines by univariate analysis, but it showed a significant correlation with the number of revisits alone by multivariate analysis. Additional prescriptions of Chinese herbal medicines as smoking-cessation aids by tailoring treatments to complaints of individual patients may have contributed to the establishment of good human relationships, led to an increase in the number of revisits, and improved therapeutic outcomes.