What are electronic cigarettes?
Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are handheld devices that work by heating a liquid that usually contains nicotine and flavourings. E-cigarettes allow you to inhale nicotine in a vapour rather than smoke. Because they do not burn tobacco, e-cigarettes do not expose users to the same levels of chemicals that can cause diseases in people who smoke conventional cigarettes.
Using an e-cigarette is commonly known as ‘vaping’. Many people use e-cigarettes to help them to stop smoking tobacco. In this review we focus primarily on e-cigarettes containing nicotine.
Why we did this Cochrane Review
Stopping smoking lowers your risk of lung cancer, heart attacks and many other diseases. Many people find it difficult to stop smoking. We wanted to find out if using e-cigarettes could help people to stop smoking, and if people using them for this purpose experience any unwanted effects.
What did we do?
We searched for studies that looked at the use of e-cigarettes to help people stop smoking.
We looked for randomized controlled trials, in which the treatments people received were decided at random. This type of study usually gives the most reliable evidence about the effects of a treatment. We also looked for studies in which everyone received an e-cigarette treatment.
We were interested in finding out:
· how many people stopped smoking for at least six months; and
· how many people had unwanted effects, reported on after at least one week of use.
Search date: We included evidence published up to 1st July 2022.
What we found
We found 78 studies which included 22,052 adults who smoked. The studies compared e-cigarettes with:
Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, et al. – Cochrane Review – Oxford – 2022-11-17.
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