Abstract: Introduction: The prevalence of smoking is rising in all developing countries, a trend seen in India also. Tobacco is killing around 3 million per year now, and the figure is expected to rise to almost 10 million per year by 2030. The average loss of life among smokers is around 8 years and respiratory morbidity is the most serious and common among all the health problems due to smoking. Materials and Methods: A case-control study was done during November and December of 2014, at a tertiary care teaching hospital in South Kerala. Cases were those adult patients who were admitted for respiratory complaints in General Medicine and Pulmonary medicine wards while controls were sex matched adult patients who were admitted for gastrointestinal complaints in the General Medicine or Gastroenterology wards. Results: There were 42 cases and 42 sex-matched controls in the study. Among the cases, 15(35.7%) were current smokers, 23(54.8%) were ex-smokers and 4(9.5%) were non-smokers, while among the controls a vast majority (28, 66.7%) were non-smokers. Among the cases, majority (37, 88.1%) were admitted for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), while the others had hemoptysis due to some cause and lower respiratory tract infection as their treating diagnoses. Smokers were 19 times more likely to get admitted in a hospital due to respiratory complaints when compared to non-smokers. (OR-19.0, 95% CI- 5.6 to 63.9). Discussion and conclusions: This study points to towards the need to control the availability and use of beedis and cigarettes in the country. The governmental effort in this regard has to be stepped-up and programmatic flaws should be addressed.
Keywords: MeSHterms Smoking/adverseeffects, Case-Control Studies, India,India/epidemiology
Title: A study to find out the proportion of smokers among patients hospitalized with respiratory complaints, in a tertiary care hospital in south India
Author: Doye George, Mathew Ninan, P Sukumaran, Shamly Cletus, Shwetha Chacko, Smitha William
International Journal of Healthcare Sciences
ISSN 2348-5728 (Online)
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