Abstract

Background: The dual use of tobacco (smoked as well as smokeless tobacco products) is mostly to either circumvent ever-growing smoke-free environment or to obtain a higher dose of nicotine to satisfy its addiction.

Material and Methods: This prospective, non-randomized study of 109 current dual tobacco users over 30 months (September 2017 to February 2020) from a TCC in a multi-specialty tertiary care hospital has focused to observe and report a correlation of the outcomes of the tobacco dependence treatment with critical features in the process- setting up of the quit date, addiction to nicotine and follow-up up to 1 year.

Results: In this male dominated study (99.08%), 41 quitted successfully (36.7%; CI - 28.1, 46.0) while 43 failed to quit (39.4%; CI- 30.6, 48.8) and 26 relapsed (23.9%; CI- 16.6, 32.5). The sole determinant to stay abstinent totally was their ability to stay quit through the follow-up of over 6 months.

Conclusion: The new learning from this study on the dual users of tobacco in India is that to achieve a higher quit rate, there is need is to sustain follow-up for a longer duration among the successful quitters. Endorsing quitting over harms reduction, this study recommends a larger and elaborate multi-centre study in view of their smaller numbers vs. sole users of smoking or SLT.

Keywords: Tobacco; Dual Users; Outcomes; India

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