New Hope for Smokers with Back Pain

There’s a unique drug now on the market for smokers trying to quit - Chantix (manufactured and distributed by Pfizer). It was actually approved by the FDA in May 2006 and given priority FDA review because of its significant potential benefit to public health.
Chantix, a prescription drug indicated for smoking cessation, is different because it acts on the brain in two ways: by providing some nicotine effects to ease withdrawal symptoms and by blocking the effects of nicotine from cigarettes if patients resume smoking.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an estimated 44.5 million adults in the United States smoke cigarettes and more than 8.6 million of them have at least one serious illness caused by smoking. In particular, smokers are nearly 3 times as likely to develop chronic low back pain as non-smokers.
According to a user survey conducted on Spine-health.com, about 30% of the chronic back pain population self reports having a smoking addiction. Couple this with the fact that about 80% of those same people are candidates for back surgery – and we have trouble. Smokers are at higher risk for healing problems after fusion surgery, which means that potentially the chronic back pain problem and the smoking addiction will remain after surgery if smokers with back pain don’t quit.
It is common for back surgeons to ask their patients to quit smoking prior to surgery and commit to not smoking for at least three months after surgery (and hopefully longer, from an overall health standpoint). In recent months, we have heard anecdotally from some of our physician members that they have seen great results using Chantix with their back pain patients. Other smoking cessation aids include:Zyban (pill), Nicotrol (nasal spray), Nicorette (gum), Nicoderm CQ (patches), Habitrol (patches), Commit (lozenges), and counseling and support groups.If you are a smoker with back pain, you should consider talking to your doctor about smoking cessation aids – to help you quit smoking and to ease your back pain.
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