Mortality in relation to smoking history: 13 years' follow-up of 68,000 Norwegian men and women 35-49 years.

A total of 44,290 men and 24,535 women aged 35-49 have been followed with respect to different causes of death during 13.3 years on average. A detailed history of smoking, together with other important risk factors, were recorded in a standardized way. Compared with the classical American and British studies, the excess mortality for the smokers was largely the same for the majority of causes. The exceptions were cerebrovascular mortality and suicides and accidents, which were more strongly related to smoking in this study. Furthermore, men who smoked only pipe, had nearly the same coronary heart disease mortality as men who smoked only cigarettes. The same applies to lung cancer mortality. Among men who had quit cigarette smoking, the coronary heart disease mortality decreased with time since quitting to almost the level of the never cigarette smokers after 5 years or more.