Smoking Finding ways to quit

The findings of the study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, sug-gest that the disease burden of cigarette smoking in the US "remains immense," write the authors.

Cigarette smoking is acknowledged as the leading cause of prevent-able deaths in the US, with experts finding cigarette smoke capable of harming almost every organ and organ system within the body.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regularly publish their estimates of mortality attributable to smoking, along with its economic cost. However, the population disease burden tends to receive less focus, despite smoking's status as a leading cause for many major medical conditions.

In 2000, the CDC published estimates of smoking-attributable mor-tality and reported that 8.6 million individuals suffered from a total of 12.7 million medical conditions attributable to smoking.

"Most of these conditions were chronic bronchitis and emphysema, often classified as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)," write the authors, "but these estimates and methods, to our knowledge, have not been subsequently updated or refined."