Documento de consenso para la atención clínica al tabaquismo en España

Tobacco use presents an odd confluence of circumstances: it is a significant and high threat to health, and there is a lack of motivation among health workers to act accordingly. Yet we have effective interventions. It is really hard to identify any other determinant of health presenting this mixture of lethality, prevalence, and lack of care, despite having effective treatments readily available. On the other hand, smoking cessation interventions are considered as the gold standard of preventive interventions, far above other preventive measures commonly used. This has prompted the National Committee for Smoking Prevention to develop a consensus document for the Clinical Care of Smoking Cessation in Spain. The purpose of this technical and scientific document is to agree on a basic proposal of quality of care to tackle smokers to quit. This document would serve as a guideline in the clinical practice in our country. The aims of this agreement are to review the effectiveness of the existing therapies for smoking cessation, to synthesize their available evidence, and to set the basic minimum standards of care in the clinical practice of patients who smoke. The consensus sets the strategies, and the evidences that support them, in order to assist both the smokers who want to quit, and the smokers who do not, setting out the steps to intervene in the most adequate.