The prevalence of all types of tobacco use among men has been reported to be high in most parts of India (generally exceeding 50%). Nearly 95 to 100% of tobacco users develop periodontal diseases that have a diminishing effect on oral health.

A structured paper-based self-administered questionnaire comprising 15 close-ended questions was formulated for the purpose of data collection for this cross-sectional survey and a sample size of 323 was estimated. Total enumeration sampling method was followed. A significant gender-wise and socioeconomic-status-wise difference was observed based on the form of tobacco used. In this cross-sectional study, 54 (16.7%) individuals began the habit before the age of 15 years, of which 14.2% of the individuals used the smoked variant and 2.4% of the individuals used the smokeless variant of tobacco.

Total 265 (82%) individuals were aware that the habit was injurious to their health, of which 90% males and 86.4% females were aware of the harmful effects of the habit. While the awareness among the upper socioeconomic group was higher, the lower socioeconomic group displayed a lower level of awareness.

To advocate effective tobacco cessation programs, understanding the dependence on tobacco habit and their knowledge and attitude toward quitting tobacco plays a major role. Hence the present study was conducted with an objective to assess the knowledge and attitude of the patients toward tobacco cessation.

Ethical Clearance was obtained from the Institutional Ethics Committee (Cert. No. ABSM/293/2022).

Article published online:
24 April 2024

© 2024. The Author(s). This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction so long as the original work is properly cited. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Thieme Medical and Scientific Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
A-12, 2nd Floor, Sector 2, Noida-201301 UP, India