Factors Related to Smoking Recurrence within Six-months Smoking Cessation among Employees in Enterprises with Smaller than 300 Workers

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify factors associated with smoking relapse within six months after quit attempts among workers in small and medium-sized enterprises in South Korea. Methods: The analysis was conducted for a total of 194 people who attempted to quit smoking by applying for a smoking cessation support service at the Regional Tobacco Control Center. The data used in the study were extracted from the Smoking Cessation Service Integrated Information System. Kaplan-Meier estimator and Cox proportional hazards regression model were used to identify variables associated with smoking relapse within six months ’ time period. Results: Smoking relapse rate within six months was 66.0%, and variables associated with relapse included the cases such as carbon monoxide (CO) at the time of registration (HR: 2.15, 95% CI: 1.10~4.22 for CO ≥ 20 ppm or more vs.CO ＜ 10 ppm), the average number of cigarettes smoked per day (HR: 1.04, 95% CI: 1.00~1.07), and the number of counseling(HR: 0.60, 95% CI: 0.54~0.67). Conclusion: Smoking characteristics and counseling showed one of the strongest correlations with relapse within six months. This implies that it is necessary to understand the smoking characteristics and patterns of workers and to provide continuous smoking cessation counseling tailored to individual characteristics for effective smoking relapse prevention.