An Excerpt From Chapter 1 of
Tobacco Intervention in Dental Practice
Helping Your Patients Stop Tobacco Use

The nicotine in tobacco is as addictive as heroin or cocaine. Tobacco use damages health and reduces quality of life. In the United States alone, tobacco is responsible for more than 430,000 deaths each year. Tobacco-related deaths represent needless disability and suffering. They produce personal tragedies and public liabilities and are an outrage to ethical, caring health professionals. Thus, effective tobacco use intervention services are among the most important health services that the oral health team can provide.

Tobacco Use Intervention in Dental Practice
There are excellent reasons why the oral health team should act against tobacco use in their practice and in community affairs.

Your patients need help. Tobacco causes oral diseases, including oral and pharyngeal cancer and other oral conditions. Its use increases dental treatment management risks and problems and slows wound healing Tobacco use has a negative impact on prognoses for periodontal disease treatment. Users of tobacco have significantly greater medical risks, compromised health, and more days of overt illness.

Dental intervention is effective. Oral health personnel usually have established a long-standing rapport with their patients, and dental practice abounds with one- and two-minute opportunities that can be used to provide practical bits of tobacco-related preventive and cessation information.

Oral health providers are also best positioned to identify tobacco-related periodontal disease and pre-cancerous lesions, which can be used to motivate tobacco users to quit. Given the regularity and length of visits to the dental office, clinicians have a unique opportunity to promote awareness of the avoidable risk factors of tobacco use.

Randomized, controlled trials have shown that oral health personnel can successfully help patients who smoke stop, that 70 percent of adult tobacco users want to stop, and that dental interventions may prevent young people from starting tobacco use. Last but by no means least, dental intervention saves lives.

Dental intervention enhances dental practice. When dental clinicians initiate tobacco cessation services in their practice, they demonstrate their concern about the total state of health and well-being of their patients. As well, the potential for receiving referrals to their practice is increased through a broader community network.

Oral health personnel are often regarded as highly effective participants in community action and health affairs. Through tobacco intervention efforts, they will develop an awareness of a significant medical problem and an area of social concern that has increasing importance at the community, national, and global levels.

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