Smoking status and survival were studied in patients with solid cancers at two Finnish university hospitals. Patients were diagnosed between 2009 and 2019; smoking status was extracted from free-text records using natural language processing and was available for 72% of the cohort. Five-year overall survival was 71% in never smokers, 58% in former smokers and 49% in current smokers. Cancer-specific survival hazard ratios were 1.52 for former and 2.09 for current smokers against never smokers. The gradient persisted after adjustment for performance status, comorbidity, nodal status and treatment intent, including in curative-intent patients, but not for uterine or kidney cancer. Smoking status was missing for 28% of patients, who were older and had poorer performance status.
Why it is interesting: Treatment intent, performance status and comorbidity are adjusted for, which few cross-cancer smoking studies manage. The same survival gradient appears in patients treated with curative intent.
Cite this item
BibTeX
Free sign-up. A digest of the new papers twice a week, grouped by domain.
Other drivers in Health today
-
Cancer
Where is cancer incidence rising and falling, what screening and new tests find earlier, and what treatment has done to survival.
8 this week -
Obesity, diabetes and GLP-1
Are obesity and diabetes still rising, what behavioural change and public policy do, and what difference do GLP-1s and other similar drugs make.
10 this week -
Heart and stroke
Whether deaths from heart disease and stroke have stopped falling, what is found earlier, what treatment and prevention do now, and what the deaths say.
4 this week -
Mental health
Deaths by suicide, the life expectancy gap in severe mental illness, and the physical disease that follows it: what mental illness costs in lives.
1 this week -
Dementia
Whether dementia is becoming more or less common, what is now found, what treatment and prevention do, and what the deaths say.
4 this week -
Frailty and multimorbidity
Whether the years added after 85 are healthy ones, how frailty and multiple conditions are measured, and where the data run out.
2 this week
