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Smoking cessation - Management
How should nicotine replacement therapy be stopped?
- Treatment can be stopped abruptly or tapered gradually. Most nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) product licences advise a gradual reduction in dosage (see the table in Dose and duration of NRT). However, abruptly stopping NRT does not seem to reduce its effectiveness:
- A Cochrane review of NRT and smoking cessation found no difference in effect between trials where the dose was tapered and trials where withdrawal was abrupt [Stead et al, 2008]. In two trials that directly compared weaning with abrupt withdrawal, no difference was found.
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