Prospective study of postdiagnosis smoking cessation and risk of lung cancer progression and mortality

A prospective study in Russia included 517 actively smoking patients with a new diagnosis of stage I to IIIA NSCLC. Among the 220 patients who quit smoking the median overall survival from diagnosis was 6.6 years; among the 297 patients who continued smoking the median OS was 4.8 years (p=0.001). After adjustments, smoking cessation was associated with decreased risk for all-cause mortality (HR 0.67; 95% CI 0.53-0.85), cancer-specific mortality (0.75; 0.58-0.98), and disease progression (0.72; 0.56-0.92).