This long-overdue podcast by Dr.

Medications to help people quit smoking are typically recommended as an early intervention, and over the past several years these have included nicotine replacement such as a patch or gum, or sustained release buproprion (zyban), and now chantix, with evidence supporting it as a leading effective option, as described in my prior post. The FDA has also approved these options for smoking cessation. Specifically, chantix is approved for people who have not received prior treatment to help them quit smoking, or in those who have tried another method unsuccessfully.

Although we’ve established that 60% or more of the new cases of lung cancer in the US each year are now in never-smokers or former smokers, active smoking is still a big problem. Ongoing smoking can worsen survival in patients receiving active treatment for lung cancer, and the risk of developing lung cancer in people who don’t have it already can be decreased significantly by quitting smoking as early as possible (see