Printable format	E-mail article:	Search news:

The August issue of The Journal of the American Dental Association explores the dentist's role in helping patients quit tobacco.

"Enhancing smoking-cessation activities as part of unabridged oral heath care no longer should be a choice" for dentists as health care providers, writes Dr. Michael Glick, JADA editor, in his August editorial. Dentists should improve their knowledge of smoking-cessation practices and play a more central role in helping tobacco-using patients kick the habit, he says, since cigarette smoking and secondhand smoke will be the cause of death of up to 450 million people worldwide over the next 50 years.

This issue of JADA includes two studies related to tobacco use.

A research team led by Deborah Hennrikus, Ph.D., from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, found that adolescents routinely underreport tobacco use on health history forms that ask them simply whether they use tobacco. Researchers theorize that adolescents who smoke socially or experimentally may not consider themselves smokers and a revised question on a health history form asking if an individual has used tobacco within the past 30 days would result in more accurate reporting of smoking habits. Researchers also advise health care providers to have adolescents complete the behavioral section of a health history form in confidence, as a parent who completes a form may not be aware of the child's smoking.

In another study, researchers at Columbia University School of Dentistry and Oral Surgery, led by Carol Kunzel, Ph.D., found that dentists believe they lack the information and know-how to help patients stop smoking, that smoking cessation activities are peripheral to their role as caregivers and that colleagues and patients do not expect them to be involved in smoking cessation. Dentists getting more information on smoking cessation and changing their view on their role in treating patients who use tobacco will help them "provide better oral health care, enhance the outcome of therapeutic procedures and play an increasingly important role in promoting the general health of patients."

Dentists who are interested in learning more about tobacco cessation and early oral cancer detection can participate in the ADA's "Dentist Saves Patient's Life! Early Oral Cancer Detection and Tobacco Use Cessation," a five-hour continuing education course scheduled in locations nationwide this fall and continuing through November 2006 (ADA News Today Aug. 8, Oral cancer, tobacco courses set).