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Lifelong smoking poses twin threats to the tiny clusters of air sacs (alveoli) that cap the end of each airway in
the branching system of ducts that permeates our lungs.
When smoking triggers emphysema, the alveoli puff out of their normal shape, allowing the walls of the airway serving
them to collapse. Inside the damaged clusters, carbon dioxide builds up in the trapped air, while fresh oxygen fails to reach
the bloodstream.
Although chronic bronchitis spares the alveoli, it too ends in oxygen starvation. Constant exposure to irritants
leads the walls of the airways to become swollen and inflamed. With the lungs' natural cleansing mechanisms compromised by
smoke, mucus builds up and clogs the narrowed ducts, ultimately depriving the alveoli—and hence the body—of the
oxygen needed for daily living. |
An estimated 8.6 million people in the United States have serious illnesses attributable to cigarette smoking:
each year, approximately 440,000 people die of these illnesses. The annual economic burden of tobacco use is more than
$75 billion in medical expenditures and another $80 billion resulting from lost productivity. In 2001, 40.6 percent
of current smokers who smoked every day had stopped smoking for at least one day during the preceeding 12 months because they
were trying to quit. Unfortuatately, more than 90 percent of the people who try to quit smoking return to smoking within
one year, with the majority relapsing in one week.
Effective treatments exist that can produce long-term or even permanent abstinence from tobacco use.
For individuals motivated to quit smoking, a combination of behavioral and pharmacologic treatments can increase the success
rate approximately two-fold over placebo treatments.
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