Intensive care helps smokers quit, study finds

A new smoking cessation study finds promising long term outcomes:

An intensive stop-smoking program with at least three months of counseling and free drugs can help smokers kick the habit, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

Their intensive care program helped 39 percent of smokers stay tobacco-free for two years, the team at Creighton University Cardiac Center in Omaha, Nebraska reported.

"What we have shown is that a very planned and organized approach to cessation of smoking, with careful follow-up, works much better than the current practice of simply advising them to quit smoking," said Dr. Syed Mohiuddin, who led the study.