Neuropsychological Prognosis Factors of Smoking Cessation

Overview

The low overall effectiveness of available smoking cessation treatment so far, indicate the need for new and more efficacious ways to help smokers maintain abstinence. Smokers are a highly heterogeneous population. Identification of individual characteristics that predict success in smoking cessation is highly desirable to allow designing more specific strategies in order to enhance success in quitting tobacco.The main objective of this study is to assess whether the presence of certain neuropsychological deficits found before the initiation of smoking cessation is associated with a greater relapse rate.The secondary objectives concern how neuropsychological performance are involved in motivation and craving in the whole sample of smokers or in subsample. Long-term perspective is to define clinical or neuropsychological factors associated with agood or poor prognosis for success and provived more specific and therefore more effective care.

This is a prospective multicenter study. Patients will be recruited to anti tobacco consultations in the Montpellier and Clermont-Ferrand University Hospitals. The initial assessment includes a clinical assessment of smoking history, Axis I disorders history, motivation to quit and craving, a neuropsychological assessment : NART, RVIP task, trail Making Test, Stroop, Iowa gambling task, Hayling test, N back, verbal fluency. Then patients will be reviewed 3 times in 6 months. These visits include: CO level and cigarette consumption since the last visit, cessation strategy (medication, observance … ), tobacco craving questionnary, withdrawal symptoms, abstinence. The primary endpoint will be smoking abstinence objectified by the rate of carbon monoxide measured at each visit. Subjects who emerge from the study prematurely, especially patients lost to follow will be considered as failures in the statistical analysis.