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Smoking bans reduce heart attack admissions

Roger Dobson

1 Abergavenny

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Bans on smoking substantially reduce hospital admissions for heart attacks, research has shown.

On the first anniversary of the ban on public smoking in England, a report shows that smoke-free laws worldwide reduce admissions by almost one fifth (Preventive Medicine 2008 Jun 18; doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2008.06.007).

This meta-analysis of published studies shows that the effects were immediate. "The fact that many studies from so many locations around the world provide consistent findings of a substantial drop in acute myocardial infarction associated with the implementation of smoke-free laws increases the confidence that . . . smoke-free policies have immediate and substantial benefits in terms of reducing acute myocardial infarctions," says the author, Stanton Glantz, professor of medicine at the University of California.

The analysis is based on eight studies published since 2004, when the first report of such a drop was reported for the town of Helena, Montana.

The results . . . [Full text of this article]


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