2021/01/07 by Brad Rodu, Nantaporn Plurphanswat · 8 citations
Medicine · Mathematics · #Smoking Behavior and Cessation #Statistical Methods in Epidemiology #Global Cancer Incidence and Screening #Medicine #Demography #National Health Interview Survey #Marital status #Confounding #Environmental health #Hazard ratio #National Death Index #Proportional hazards model #Confidence interval #Internal medicine #Population
paper · pdf · doi:10.1186/s12954-020-00446-4
published in Harm Reduction Journal 18(1), 7 (BioMed Central)
openalex publication_date 2021/01/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
BACKGROUND: Cigars and cigarettes are both smoked, but much less is known about the former's long-term health effects, due to its low prevalence and infrequent collection of cigar information in national surveys. PURPOSE: We conducted a follow-up mortality study of cigar-smoking men age 40-79 years in National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS). METHODS: We used pooled NHIS files linked to the National Death Index to obtain follow-up from year of interview to year of death or December 31, 2015. We developed categories of cigarette and cigar smoking that accommodate dual and former use of both products. We used Cox proportional hazards models, adjusted for age, race/ethnicity, marital status, education, income and region to estimate hazard ratios (HRs, 95% confidence intervals, CI) for mortality from all causes, heart diseases, malignant neoplasms, cerebrovascular disease, chronic lower respiratory diseases and two mutually exclusive categories: smoking-related and other diseases. RESULTS: There were 14,657 deaths from all causes, including 3426 never tobacco users, 3276 exclusive cigarette smokers and 176 exclusive cigar users. The latter had no statistically significant evidence of increased mortality from all causes, heart diseases, malignant neoplasms, cerebrovascular disease, smoking-related diseases or other causes. In contrast, the mortality experience of dual users of cigars and cigarettes and cigar smokers who formerly used cigarettes is similar to exclusive cigarette smokers. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides evidence that male cigar smokers age 40 + years had elevated mortality risks. However, after accounting for cigarette smoking and other confounding variables, we found significantly increased mortality only among dual and former users of cigarettes.