
A new study published in the journal Circulation suggests that quitting the use of tobacco can extend the life expectancy of those who experience a heart attack.
"We didn't expect to see such a strong association among those people who stopped using (smokeless tobacco)," said Gabriel Arefalk, M.D., lead researcher and cardiologist at Uppsala University Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden. "After a heart attack, no doubt smoking cessation reduces the risk of death approximately one third and is really a cornerstone of cardiac rehabilitation worldwide. For smokeless tobacco, we did not know."
This may be the first study to examine the impact of smokeless tobacco on death in heart attack survivors. Researchers analyzed the effect of quitting the use of snus, a moist Swedish smokeless powder tobacco kept under the upper lip. It's a variant of snuff, but doesn't need to be spit out.They reviewed data on heart attack survivors younger than 75 in Sweden in 2005-09 and identified 2,474 snus users. Of those, 675 quit using snus.
Source: Eurekalert
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