Cardiac smokers: beliefs and values about smoking, and attitudes toward the risk of smoking to health.

Many cardiac patients continue to smoke, although this greatly increases their risk of health complications. This study explored cognitive and social factors which may discriminate between cardiac smokers who will be successful in quitting smoking and those who relapse to smoking following hospitalization for a myocardial infarction or coronary artery bypass graft surgery. Patients were interviewed prior to discharge from hospital and when they returned to clinic. Few patients were found to have resumed smoking when they returned to clinic. However, patients who had only recently quit smoking were found to be susceptible to relapse to smoking on the basis of their attitudes towards the risk of smoking to their health and the reduced social pressure from significant others not to smoke. Data suggested that nurses did not take full advantage of opportunities to influence cardiac patients about smoking.