Changes in smoking status after a cardiac rehabilitation program in Spain: description of a smoker's profile

Abstract Background Cigarette smoking is a major cardiovascular (CV) risk factor and aids to the development and progression of CV disease. Purpose To study the prevalence of smoking in a contemporary Spanish cardiac rehabilitation (CR) cohort, study changes in smoking status over time and define smoker's profile after CR. Methods Single-centre, observational retrospective study from all consecutive patients with ischaemic heart disease (n=1379, 6.6% women, age 65.78±11.02 years) that participated in a CR program from 2015 to 2020. Prevalence of smokers was studied over time, from CV event to 6 months after end of CR, including a stratified description of smokers per age group at CV event. Additionally, a comparative analysis of patient profile for those who continued smoking and patients that quitted smoking after CR, was performed. Results N=516 patients (37.4%) were active smokers at CV event, including 72 women (31% of all women) and 444 men (38.6% of all men). Highest percentage of smokers was distributed among the youngest age groups: with a 72.6% prevalence among those aged <45 years and 57.9% among those aged 45–55 years. Smoking prevalence decreased with age. Also, there were less female than male smokers in all analysed age groups (Figure 1). At the beginning of CR, the global proportion of active smokers decreased significantly (p<0.01) to a 15.3% (n=210) and continued to significantly decrease at end of CR (10%, n=124), maintaining similar levels at 6 months follow-up (9.9%, n=96). 58% of active smokers at CV event quitted smoking by end of CR. Ongoing smokers were significantly more (p<0.05) depressed (n=20, 16.3%); and had significantly worse (p<0.05) HADS scores at beginning of CR (anxiety: 6.49±3.98, depression: 5.41±4.46), Table 1. Conclusions Smoking is nowadays still highly prevalent among CR patients in our setting, especially among young men. Despite a significant fall in the prevalence of smokers after the end of the CR program, there is a non-negligible percentage of patients that keep smoking. Targeted smoking cessation interventions should be aimed at smokers that have more depression and have worse HADS scores at baseline. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: None.