Smoking bans 'cut heart attacks'

21 September 2009 10:07pm

Smoking bans have dramatically reduced the number of heart attacks in Europe and North America, cutting rates by between a quarter and more than a third, two major studies have shown.

The evidence suggests that anti-smoking laws have had a bigger impact on heart health than anyone expected when they were introduced.

Many thousands of lives will already have been saved by stopping people smoking in public places, according to the findings.

Heart attacks strike an estimated 275,000 people in the UK each year and kill 146,000.

Earlier this month it was claimed that heart attack rates fell by about 10% in England in the year after the ban on smoking in public places was introduced in July 2007.

The early results from a study commissioned by the Department of Health and reported in the Sunday Times were said to have shown a sharper drop than researchers had expected. Separate research showed a 14% fall in heart attack numbers in Scotland which imposed a similar ban a year earlier.

The new research from two separate teams looking at a large body of evidence from both Europe and North America suggests that even these figures may underestimate the significance of smoking bans.

Meanwhile, help offered by the NHS to people wanting to give up smoking may have saved 70,000 lives over the last 10 years, it is claimed.

Researchers at the Department of Health based the figure on the two million successful quit attempts recorded since the introduction of NHS Stop Smoking Services. Reformed smokers are considered to have quit if they have kept away from cigarettes for a month.

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