Postdiagnosis Smoking Cessation Significantly Improves Survival in Cancer Survivors

FRIDAY, Oct. 17, 2025 (HealthDay News) — For cancer survivors, postdiagnosis smoking cessation is associated with improved overall survival, according to a study published in the October issue of the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

Steven Tohmasi, M.D., from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and colleagues examined the association between smoking cessation and overall survival in cancer survivors who smoke, across all disease stages, in an observational cohort of 13,282 patients diagnosed with cancer.

The researchers found that patients who reported currently smoking or having previously smoked at their index visit had an increased risk for all-cause mortality compared with patients who never smoked (adjusted hazard ratios, 1.35 and 1.13, respectively). Of patients who reported currently smoking at their index visit, only 22.1 percent quit smoking within six months. Compared with those who had quit smoking, patients who continued to smoke had a higher risk for all-cause mortality in multivariable analyses (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.97). In patients with advanced-stage cancer (III or IV), there was an association between continued smoking and all-cause mortality (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.11).

“When we”ve shown patients our data, it gives them hope and motivates them to want to quit. An extra year of life is a long time for patients who may have been told they only had months to live,” Tohmasi said in a statement.

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