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- Posted October 10, 2025
Quitting Smoking Nearly Doubles Cancer Patients' Short-Term Survival Odds, Experts Say
Experts argue it’s never too late to quit smoking, and a new study says that applies to people with late-stage cancer as well.
Patients with advanced cancer gained nearly a full year of additional life if they quit smoking, compared to those who kept lighting up, researchers reported Oct 9 in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
“It is never too late, and no one is ever ‘too sick’ to quit smoking,” said senior researcher Dr. Li-Shiun Chen, director of the smoking cessation program in the Barnes-Jewish Hospital’s Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine at St. Louis.
“Individuals with cancer who stop smoking after their diagnosis live significantly longer than those who continue smoking, even when their cancer is at an advanced stage,” Chen continued in a news release.
For the study, researchers followed more than 13,000 cancer patients treated at the Siteman Cancer Center between June and December 2018, tracking whether they quit smoking following their diagnosis.
Of those patients, 13% said they were currently smoking, researchers found.
Only about 1 in 5 of those smokers quit within six months after their first visit for cancer treatment, according to the study.
Those who kept smoking had a nearly doubled risk of dying within two years, compared to those who quit smoking as part of their cancer care, results showed.
“Lifestyle change such as quitting smoking can prolong survival even more than some chemotherapies,” lead researcher Dr. Steven Tohmasi, a surgical resident at Siteman Cancer Center, said in a news release.
“Our research reinforces the idea that smoking cessation should be considered the fourth pillar of cancer care — alongside surgery, radiation therapy and chemo/immunotherapy,” he continued. “Future cancer care must treat smoking cessation not as an optional extra, but as a core part of the treatment plan. By doing so, we can maximize survival, improve quality of life and truly deliver comprehensive oncology care.”
A North Carolina doctor who reviewed the findings called the doubled survival odds for cancer patients who quit smoking a “huge effect.”
“Because this is an observational study, we need to be careful about inferring causality — we can’t say with confidence that smoking cessation saved all of these people’s lives,” said Dr. James Davis, medical director of the Center for Smoking Cessation at the Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, N.C.
“We can say, however, that in the context of what we already know about smoking and cancer, this study suggests a profound impact of smoking cessation before and after a person develops cancer,” he said.
More information
The American Cancer Society has more on the benefits of quitting tobacco if you have cancer.
SOURCE: National Comprehensive Cancer Network, news release, Oct. 9, 2025
