Kicking the Habit: Active Smokers Show Higher Risk for Blocked Coronary Arteries

Each year alone, smoking causes over 440,000 deaths in the United States alone. That means smoking is responsible for roughly one in five deaths in America.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that an estimated 90 percent of all lung cancers in men and 80 percent of lung cancers in women are caused from smoking. Similarly, an estimated 90 percent of all deaths from chronic obstructive lung cancer are smoking-related.

Smoking can be particularly stressful on the heart and studies show that those who smoke are 2 to 4 times more likely to suffer from stroke and other problems when engaging in this nasty habit.

"Smoking is an established risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Studies have identified that quitting smoking can reduce heart attacks and death but have not examined the relationship of this salutary effect on the presence and severity of coronary artery disease (CAD)," Dr Min said via a press release, who is the director of the Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital and the Weill Cornell Medical College. "Our study aimed to find out what impact stopping smoking had on the risk of cardiovascular events, death and the severity of CAD."

Background information from the study notes that the prospective CONFIRM (Coronary CT Evaluation for Clinical Outcomes: An International Multicenter Study) says that of 13,372 patients from 9 different countries encompassing Europe, North America and East Asia, researchers looked at major risk factors involving adverse cardiac events in 2,853 active smokers, 3,175 past smokers and 7,344 participants who had never smoked.

The study showed that both active and past smokers had a higher prevalence of severely blocked coronary arteries compared to those who had never picked up the habit, which the authors determined via a coronary computed tomographic angiography (CCTA). This is a non-invasive imaging technique that allows researchers to be able to more clearly picture the coronary arteries.

The study showed that active and past smokers had a 1.5-fold higher probability of severe stenosis in 1 and 2 major heart arteries and a 2-fold increased probability of severe stenosis in all major heart arteries.

A 2 year follow up also showed that approximately 2.1 percent of study participants experienced heart attacks or death and the rates of heart attack or death were almost 2-fold higher in active smokers compared to those who never smoked. The study showed that past smokers had the same rate.

Yet Dr. Min ended his findings on a hopeful note, suggesting that if you had started smoking, kicking the habit could still improve your health.

"It's never too late to quit smoking," he said. "This study clearly shows that stopping smoking lowers the risk of heart attacks and death to the level of never smokers."

More information regarding the study can be found via the European Society of Cardiology.