Quitting smoking is possible:
OF COURSE lT lS
Collaboration:
Dr. Román Rodríguez Barrigüete
Smoking is one of the main epidemics in
our society in terms of how it affects the
health of the population and is the leading
cause of death in developed countries. It is
a widespread disease. Approximately 33%
of the population in the world smokes re-
gularly and this has serious consequences
on their health, with pathologies directly re-
lated to the consumption of tobacco which
are among the most frequent in our times.
The consumption of tobacco has multiple
consequences on our organism and could
be resumed, depending on the systems
affected, as follows:
•
Cardiovascular:
Tobacco is one of
the main factors in cardiovascular risk
and heart attacks are frequent among
smokers, as well as angina, ictus, or
strokes such as peripheral artery di-
sease that could lead to severe blood
risks in the legs.
•
Lung problems:
90% of chronic obs-
tructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is
attributable to smoking. In fact, anyo-
ne who smokes a pack of cigarettes
during 14 years or more than 10 years
should have a check-up to rule out
this disease.
•
Neoplasms:
Certain types of cancer
are linked to smoking. The most sig-
nificant among these are lung cancer
(more than 80% of cases), cancer
of the larynx (more than 90% of ca-
ses), bladder cancer (more than 80%
of cases) without mentioning many
others which are also related to smo-
king although not as categorically as
the above-mentioned (stomach, co-
lon, and other types of cancer).
Quitting smoking certainly improves the
quality of our lives. Abandoning this addic-
tion would significantly reduce the causes
of death in the western world. It is calcula-
ted that between 4.5 and 5 million people
die each year as a consequence of smo-
king.
To achieve our objective, we want to warn
the smoking population in clear terms that:
•
Tobacco does not contribute anything
to our lives; quite the opposite. It re-
presents an important financial ex-
pense and the only thing that it does
is damage our health.
•
Quitting smoking is perfectly possible
with the current available treatments.
All efforts to disseminate these messages
from the Public Health System and private
entities, including the Medical Services of
the Company can play a key role and would
certainly help in improving the health and
quality of life of our co-citizens.
