Visha Shailesh Pandya¹*, Naganandini Sampath², Amit Vasant Mahuli³, Roma Yadav⁴, Jahanvi Kapadiya¹, Satyendra Singh¹ and Pankaj Chaudhary⁵

¹Post Graduate, Department of Public Health Dentistry, NIMS Dental College and Hospital, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
²Professor and Head, Department of Public Health Dentistry, NIMS Dental College and Hospital, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
³Associate Professor, Department of Public Health Dentistry, RIMS Dental Institute, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India
⁴MDS (Public Health Dentistry), Private Practitioner, Gurgaon, India
⁵Reader, Department of Public Health Dentistry, NIMS Dental College and Hospital, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

*Corresponding Author: Visha Shailesh Pandya, Department of Public Health Dentistry, NIMS Dental College and Hospital, NIMS University, Shobha Nagar, Delhi Jaipur Highway, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.

Received: July 15, 2021; Published: August 07, 2021

Abstract

Aim: To assess the efficacy of appearance related smoking intervention as a motivational trigger for smoking cessation among university students.

Objectives: To sensitize the student smokers to quit smoking using the photoaging intervention app and to assess the efficacy of smoking cessation intervention by comparing successful quitting (assessed by Fagerström score) between the intervention and control groups.

Methods: The present study is a randomized controlled trial that was carried out among a sample of 156 students having the habit of smoking, who were randomly allocated into intervention and control group. The study was conducted over a period of one year in the Tobacco Cessation Centre (TCC) of a private Dental College and Hospital, Jaipur from October 2018 to September 2019. Both the groups were given behavioral counseling, along with this Smokerface application was used in the intervention group. The groups were assessed at the 3^rd and 6^th month’s intervals. Objective validation was done using the Cotinine test. Data was analyzed using SPSS (19) software.

Results: The highest reduction was seen in the intervention group. 84.61% of participants of the intervention group and 67.94% of participants of the Control group had quit smoking upon objective validation by Cotinine analysis. These findings were found to be statistically significant.

Conclusion: The effective usage of the smartphone application along with the usage of behavioral counseling techniques has great potential in contributing as a useful tool for smoking cessation efforts among young adults.

Keywords: Tobacco; Smoking; Tobacco Cessation; Smartphone Apps; Behavior Change Techniques

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Citation

Citation: Visha Shailesh Pandya., et al. “Appearance Related Intervention for Smoking Cessation among University Students-Randomized Controlled Trial”. Acta Scientific Dental Sciences 5.9 (2021): 39-45.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 Visha Shailesh Pandya., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.