Assessing Cancer Patient Tobacco Use

Studies have demonstrated that cancer patients who smoke cigarettes at the time of diagnosis are at a disadvantage compared with people who previously or never smoked. They face increased difficulty with surgical wound healing; more treatment morbidity; reduced radiation and chemotherapy efficacy; reduced time to recurrence, progression, and second primary cancers; and increased mortality. There are still many unaddressed questions related to tobacco use by cancer patients, but research in that area was historically impeded by inadequate assessment of tobacco use after cancer diagnosis and a lack of valid, harmonized measures that are tailored to the trajectory of cancer diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship.

To facilitate that research, NCI partnered with the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) to form the NCI-AACR Cancer Patient Tobacco Use Assessment Task Force (PDF), which in turn developed the Cancer Patient Tobacco Use Questionnaire (C-TUQ). The measures have undergone clinical testing and are now available for use in all cancer research.

Reports from the NCI-AACR Cancer Patient Tobacco Use Assessment Task Force

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Last Updated
April 11, 2024