Smokers with coronary heart disease who suffer a heart attack or severe angina, rapidly benefit from kicking the smoking habit, German investigators report.

Smoking cessation clearly improves the long-term prognosis of coronary heart disease, the authors explain in the European Heart Journal, but few studies have examined the short-term impact of quitting smoking.

Dr. Dorothee Twardella from the German Centre for Research on Ageing, Heidelberg, and colleagues investigated smoking behavior among nearly 1000 patients during three weeks of rehabilitation after they had suffered a so-called “acute coronary syndrome” event.

At the beginning of rehab, 4 percent of patients reported that they were still smoking, the researchers report, but blood tests showed that 13 percent were smokers at the end of rehab.

“The finding of a high frequency of smoking in self-reported recent quitters at the end of rehab underlines the need to focus during rehab not only on continued smokers to assist in smoking cessation but also on recent quitters to prevent relapse,” Twardella’s team comments.

Self-reported smoking was strongly associated with the occurrence of second coronary events over the following year, the report indicates, whereas smoking cessation was associated with a 40 percent reduction in the risk of second occurrences.

“The benefits of non-smoking in cardiac patients are beyond controversy and might even be larger than reported from former studies,” the investigators conclude. “Our study suggests that major beneficial effects of smoking cessation are expected even within the first year after acute manifestation of coronary heart disease.”

SOURCE: European Heart Journal, December 2004.