Smoking Behavior among Coronary Heart Disease Patients in Jordan: A Model from a Developing Country

The purpose of this study was to compare the frequency of cigarette smoking before and after diagnosis of Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), detect the reasons that discourage quitting smoking and resources of advice about quitting, and investigate the relationship between smoking behaviors and demographic variables. A convenient sample of 300 CHD patients from cardiac outpatient clinics participated. Before disease occurrence, nonsmokers composed 40% of all participants, former smokers 11.7%, and current smokers 48.3%. Surprisingly, after disease occurrence only 29.7% of the patients quit smoking, while 60.7% continued smoking, and 9.6% relapsed. The most frequent reasons given by smokers for not quitting smoking were "do not incline to stop smoking" (25.6%) and "craving for a cigarette" (25%). Doctors were cited most frequently as the reason individuals quit smoking (19.0%). The Jordanian health care system needs to implement systematic intensive smoking cessation programs to maintain and promote CHD patients' motivation to quit smoking.