The Stop-Tabac Smartphone Application for Smoking Cessation: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
Thursday, November 18, 2021
Posted by: Bailey Varey
Etter JF, Khazaal Y.
The Stop-Tabac Smartphone Application for Smoking Cessation: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Addiction.
2021 Nov 5. doi: 10.1111/add.15738. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 34738687.
Aims. To test whether the Stop-Tabac smartphone application increased smoking cessation rates.
Design. A 2-arm, parallel group, individually randomized, double-blind, controlled trial.
Setting and participants. 5293 daily smokers (Stop-tabac=2639, control=2654) enrolled on app stores and on the Internet in 2019-2020, who lived in France or Switzerland.
Intervention and comparator. The Stop-tabac application includes immediate feedback during episodes of craving and withdrawal; individually-tailored counseling messages with notifications sent during 6 months; a discussion forum; fact sheets; modules on nicotine replacement therapy and e-cigarettes; and calculators of cigarettes not smoked, money saved, and days of life gained since quitting. The control application included five brief pages and calculators as above.
Measurements. Primary outcome: self-reported smoking cessation after 6 months (no puff of tobacco in the past 4 weeks), with non-responders counted as smokers. Secondary outcome: self-reported use of nicotine medications.
Findings. Participants were 36 years old on average, 66% were women, they smoked 15 cig./day, and 64% screened positive for depression. Stop-tabac participants used the app over a longer period than control participants (23 vs 11 days, p<.001). Smoking cessation rates after 6 months were 9.9% in the Stop-tabac group versus 10.3% in the control group (odds ratio = 0.96, 95% confidence interval = 0.80-1.45, p=0.63). Rates of use of nicotine medications after entry in the study were 38% vs. 30% after 6 months (X2 =8.3, p=0.004) in the Stop-tabac and control groups. After 6 months, 42% of quitters in the Stop-tabac group and 13% in the control group said that the app helped them "a lot" or "enormously" to quit smoking (X2 =82, p<.001).
Conclusions. In smokers enrolled on the app stores and the Internet, allocation to the Stop-tabac smoking cessation app did not increase smoking cessation rates but did increase rates of use of nicotine medications.
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