An analysis of the economic impact of smoking cessation in Europe

BMC Public Health

Table 1 Summary results of cost effectiveness of 3 smoking cessation interventions

Compared to “no intervention”	Effectiveness	Duration of intervention	Incremental cost	Incremental QALYs (*)	ICER (**)
Brief Intervention (BA)	3%	3 minutes of GP time	- £12	0.01	Dom (***)
BA + self help material + NRT (****) + specialist clinic	15%	4 mins GP time + self help material + NRT + clinic costs	- £115	0.15	Dom
Nicotine patch + pharmacist + behavioural programme	35%	NRT for 5 weeks + 5 pharmacist consultations + 5 behavioural clinic visits	- £222	0.30	Dom

Source: adapted from [8].
(*) QALY = Quality Adjusted Life Year: a measure capturing both length of life and health state preference adjusted quality of life.
(**) ICER = Incremental Cost Effectiveness Ratio: shows the extra cost of producing one extra QALY for this intervention as compared with no intervention.
(***) Dom = Dominant: A dominant result occurs when the net cost of the intervention is both lower than that of the comparator (in this case no intervention) and also produces more output (QALYs). A dominant result is unambiguously more cost effective.
(****) Nicotine Replacement Therapy.

ISSN: 1471-2458