Abstract

Background: Tobacco smoking has been delineated by the World Health Organization as an epidemic, with worldwide mortality of eight million deaths annually. The prevalence of smoking tobacco in Saudi Arabia reached 27.9% among males and 2.9% among females in 2015. The study aimed to determine why smokers relapse after quitting tobacco use.
Methods: This is a cross-sectional analytical study which was done in Naqaa Anti-Smoking Charitable Organization through Closed-ended questionnaires which were distributed at the organization to be self-filled by the participants.
Results: The study revealed that 80% of participants had tried to quit smoking in the past. Approximately three-quarters of respondents (72.5%) identified the health burden as the primary reason for them to pursue smoking cessation. The most widely used treatment to quit or reduce smoking among the sample participants was bioresonance therapy (13.9%), while the second used method was nicotine gum (11.7%). Approximately 76% of the 308 smokers have relapsed at least once after quitting smoking.
Conclusion: The smoking relapse rate among Saudi males in Dammam is high (76%). The study also revealed that the two main factors causing relapse in smokers are distress and social smoking, respectively. These findings indicate the need for the Kingdom’s smoking cessation clinics to implement smoking cessation strategies and treatments that consider distress as the main target for intervention.

Key words: Prevalence, Factors, Relapse, Smoking Cessation.