Abstract

Smoking is one of the most important preventable cause of morbidity and mortality in Korea. Nicotine dependence and withdrawl symptoms are classified as a disease entity in DSM-IV and ICD-10 (international classification of diseases). All the health professionals should deal with smoking as a part of health care. The effective way of smoking cessation consists of behavioral therapy and pharmacotherapy. Stress, with or without alcohol, is one of the most important stimulant of smoking and is a most common cause of failure in smoking cessation. So behavioral therapy should include stress management. Smokers smoke almost everytime when they get stressed. They do not know how to confront stress without smoking. The health professionals should convince the smokers that non-smokers can manage stress in their own way. Pharmacotherapy is well documented way of smoking cessation. NRT (nicotine replacement therapy) includes nicotine patch, gum and lozenge. Oral medication includes bupropion and varenicline. NRT and bupropion increase success rate about 2 times. Varenicline seems to be the most effective medication so far and increase success rate about 3 times. (Korean J Str Res 2007;15:279∼285)

• Keywords: Smoking cessation, Behavioral therapy, Pharmacotherapy;