Quitting Smokeless Tobacco after Heart Attack Boosts Longevity

A new study highlights the impact of smokeless tobacco on mortality among heart attack survivors.

There has been a dramatic rise in the use of smokeless tobacco as well as new generation of smokeless tobacco products in the market. The different kinds of smokeless tobacco include snuff, betel quid, electronic cigarettes and chewing tobacco. Smokeless tobacco is also addictive and is known to cause cancer and heart diseases.

In a new finding, researchers at Uppsala University Hospital, Sweden, found that by completely quitting smokeless tobacco, after surviving a heart attack, one can boost  life expectancy similar to those who quit smoking. 

"We didn't expect to see such a strong association among those people who stopped using (smokeless tobacco)," said Gabriel Arefalk, M.D., lead researcher and cardiologist at Uppsala University Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden. "After a heart attack, no doubt smoking cessation reduces the risk of death approximately one third and is really a cornerstone of cardiac rehabilitation worldwide. For smokeless tobacco, we did not know."

In this study the researchers evaluated the effect of the use of snus, a moist Swedish smokeless tobacco powder that is kept under the upper lip. It is a variant of snuff but doesn't need to be spit out.

They worked on the data that included information on heart attack survivors younger than 72 in Sweden in 2005-2009 and also 2,474 snus users out of which 675 had quit.

The researchers noticed that during the two year follow-up nearly 14 snus quitters died and 69 of those who continued using snus died. Using a methodical model the researchers estimated that the death rate was 9.7 per 1000 persons-years for snus quitters and 18.7 for snus users.

They also factored in age, gender, other tobacco use, occupation and participation in cardiac rehab program and found that those who quit snus  lowered their mortality risk by 50 percent.

According to the study reports, nearly 1.7 billion cans of snuff are consumed in the U.S. every year.  The largest population of snuff users is in Sweden with 20 percent men and 3 percent women using snus daily. 

This finding is documented in the Journal Circulation.