Please note this application is under active development. If you spot any errors or something isn't working, please contact us at evidence.service@wales.nhs.uk.
Systematic Review
To determine if an intervention to enhance one-to-one partner support for smokers attempting to quit improves smoking cessation outcomes, compared with cessation interventions lacking a partner-support component.
This update search identified 465 citations, which we assessed for eligibility. Three new studies met the criteria for inclusion, giving a total of 14 included studies (n = 3370). The definition of partner varied among the studies. The authors compared partner support versus control interventions at six- to nine-month follow-up and at 12 or more months follow-up. They also examined outcomes among three subgroups: interventions targeting relatives, friends or coworkers; interventions targeting spouses or cohabiting partners; and interventions targeting fellow cessation programme participants. All studies gave self-reported smoking cessation rates, with limited biochemical verification of abstinence. The pooled risk ratio (RR) for abstinence was 0.97 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.83 to 1.14; 12 studies; 2818 participants) at six to nine months, and 1.04 (95% CI 0.88 to 1.22; 7 studies; 2573 participants) at 12 months or more post-treatment. Of the 11 studies that measured partner support at follow-up, only two reported a significant increase in partner support in the intervention groups. One of these studies reported a significant increase in partner support in the intervention group, but smokers' reports of partner support received did not differ significantly. The authors judged one of the included studies to be at high risk of selection bias, but a sensitivity analysis suggests that this did not have an impact on the results. There were also potential issues with detection bias due to a lack of validation of abstinence in five of the 14 studies; however, this is not apparent in the statistically homogeneous results across studies. Using the GRADE system the authors rated the overall quality of the evidence for the two primary outcomes as low. They downgraded due to the risk of bias, as they judged studies with a high weighting in analyses to be at a high risk of detection bias. In addition, a study in both analyses was insufficiently randomised. The authors also downgraded the quality of the evidence for indirectness, as very few studies provided any evidence that the interventions tested actually increased the amount of partner support received by participants in the relevant intervention group.
Interventions that aim to enhance partner support appear to have no impact on increasing long-term abstinence from smoking. However, most interventions that assessed partner support showed no evidence that the interventions actually achieved their aim and increased support from partners for smoking cessation. Future research should therefore focus on developing behavioural interventions that actually increase partner support, and test this in small-scale studies, before large trials assessing the impact on smoking cessation can be justified.