Smoking cessation and lung cancer: never too late to quit

have decreased since 2000, smoking remains a key modifiable risk factor for premature mortality and is the number-one risk factor for lung cancer. Continued smoking is associated with a substantially increased risk of all-cause mortality and tumour recurrence in patients with a diagnosis of lung cancer;1 previous studies have shown improved recurrence-free and overall survival in former smokers with lung cancer compared with current smokers. A 2022 meta-analysis by Caini and colleagues2 showed that quitting smoking at or around the time of lung-cancer diagnosis (ie, within 12 months) was associated with improved overall survival. the effects of duration of smoking cessation before a diagnosis of lung cancer on overall and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC )-specific survival across four America). It highlights the benefits of stopping smoking, even in the year before diagnosis, and shows increasing benefit with longer durations of abstinence (particularly