Telemedicine-based smoking cessation program in a south-american country

Smoking cessation improve the length and quality of life. With restricted mobilization during the pandemic, we decided to carry out our Smoking Cessation Program via telemedicine. We aimed to aid patients to stop smoking and evaluate the effectiveness of this format on our population. Smoking adults that where referred to our program were our subjects. Patients with non compensated psychiatric disorders were referred to Psychiatry for stabilization, as were polyaddicts. Patients attended on-line sessions where they were prepared and educated based on cognitive behavioral therapy. If patients had moderate or high nicotine addiction, evaluated by Fagertröm's test, nicotine replacement therapy and Bupropion was prescribed. A smoking cessation date was set after the third week, with the remaining sessions to reinforce relapse prevention. Patients were followed-up at months 1, 3, 6 and 12 after the program. 64 patients have completed one year after the program. 23 patients were lost at the first month of follow up. 7 additional patients weren't reachable on the third month, another 5 patients were lost at the sixth month and one more on the 12th month of follow-up. Of the 28 patients that we could reach on the 12th month, 6 were smoking again and one had some relapses. If we assumed the worst case scenario, and all patients that were lost to follow-up had relapsed, then the success rate of our cessation program was 33% after one year of quitting. Success rate for smoking cessation through telemedicine in our population is lower than with our standard face-to-face clinical visit program. This is a useful tool that could be implemented to reach patients in remote areas with low access to standard cessation programs.