
Not all people with lung disease have a history of smoking. However if your patient is a current smoker, the most important thing they can do to slow the rate of deterioration of their lung function is to quit.
Resources for you
Supporting smoking cessation: A guide for health professionals
This second edition is the most comprehensive update, and brings the guideline in line with new modalities of smoking cessation. It also incorporates GRADE – a new approach to assessing clinical evidence and drafting practice recommendations.
Nicotine vaping products: Information for prescribers
An overview of how medical practitioners can prescribe nicotine vaping products for their patients where appropriate and their obligations when doing so. It also applies to other health practitioners, such as nurse practitioners, who may be authorised to prescribe these products.
Lung Age Estimator
Our ‘Lung Age Estimator’ is a useful tool health professionals can use to motivate patients to quit smoking. By entering a patient’s age, height, gender and FEV (Forced Expiratory Volume in 1 second), their lung age is estimated. A graph is also shown which highlights the rate of lung function decline.
Reference
1 Fletcher, C and Peto, R. The natural history of chronic airflow obstruction. BMJ. 1977, Vol. 1, pp.1645-1648.