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Being hospitalized is rarely a joyous event, but it can be an ideal setting to get patients to stop smoking, according to new research.

Because hospitals are smoke-free, virtually all smokers must quit cold turkey when admitted for treatment. Add to this that hospital patients are not feeling well and often need to make lifestyle changes and you have a perfect opportunity to help them kick the habit, the study concludes.

"Hospitalization provides a window of opportunity for initiating smoking cessation interventions," said Nancy Rigotti, director of tobacco research and treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and lead author of the paper, published in today's edition of the Cochrane Library.

She said that while people admitted to hospital for smoking-related conditions such as heart attacks, stroke and emphysema are highly receptive to the idea of smoking cessation, the research demonstrates that interventions are successful regardless of a patient's condition.

Dr. Rigotti cautioned, however, that to quit successfully, patients addicted to tobacco need intense counselling not only while in hospital but for at least one month after discharge.

"There is no evidence that less-intensive counselling interventions, particularly those that do not continue after hospital discharge, are effective in promoting smoking cessation," she said.

The new research was conducted under the auspices of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international charity that conducts systematic reviews of evidence on a broad range of health issues.

In this case, researchers included the results of 33 trials of hospital-based smoking cessation programs in their analysis. All told, these studies involved more than 5,600 patients.

The review concluded that only "intensive behavioural interventions" - defined as at least 30 minutes of in-hospital counselling and one month of follow-up counselling - were successful in helping patients quit smoking.

The study showed, interestingly, that most hospitals did not provide patients with nicotine patches or smoking cessation drugs such as Zyban, in large part because they could interact with other medications and interfere with treatment.

But even when those smoking cessation aides were provided, they made little difference. Rather it was counselling - the ability to speak to a health professional - that benefited patients most, according to the study.

A second, unrelated study published today by the Cochrane Library concluded that there is no clear evidence that people who reduce their cigarette consumption - rather than quitting completely - derive any health benefit.

Lindsay Stead, co-ordinator of the tobacco addictions research group at Oxford University, and the lead researcher for the study, said very little quality research has been published on the topic, but she added that some useful pointers could be gleaned from available data.

Firstly, between six and nine per cent of people using nicotine replacement therapy such as patches and gum managed to reduce their cigarette use, a higher rate than the one to three per cent who did not use nicotine replacement.

Second, contrary to warnings, there was no evidence that reducing cigarette consumption prevented smokers from stopping completely. And finally, there is no evidence that reducing the number of cigarettes smoked provides an equivalent reduction in smoking-related disease.

"The only clear benefit is that aiming to reduce use often leads to people eventually stopping completely," Dr. Stead said.

About 19 per cent of Canadians aged 15 and older - just under five million people - are regular smokers, according to the Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey.

More than 37,000 people die each year in Canada because of tobacco use (including at least 800 non-smokers who will die from exposure to second-hand smoke), making smoking the most deadly form of preventable disease and premature death, according to Health Canada.