Effectiveness of smoking cessation intervention based on the ABC Approach in patients with TB.

SETTING

Urban setting in the Philippines.

OBJECTIVE

To assess the effectiveness of the ABC Approach developed by The Union as a tobacco-smoking cessation intervention for TB patients at a primary healthcare level in an urban setting in the Philippines.

DESIGN

We set up an intervention group whose patients with TB received the ABC approach and a control group of patients with TB receiving only routine health education in Manila, The Philippines. We collected smoking status and the domestic secondhand-smoking (SHS) status data from patients with TB at months 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 12. TB treatment outcome data were also collected.

RESULTS

Patients with TB ( 2,174) were enrolled upon TB registration. Smoking rates were consistently low in the intervention group (3.9% vs. 8.7% at Month 6). The odds ratios of both tobacco-smoking status and domestic SHS status in the intervention group were significantly lower than those in the control group (tobacco-smoking status: < 0.001, domestic SHS status: < 0.01). TB treatment success rates were similar between the groups (85.0% vs. 87.3%; = 0.201).

CONCLUSION

The ABC approach successfully reduced tobacco-smoking rates, maintained low domestic SHS rates and TB treatment success rates in the Philippines.