MORTALITY IN RELATION TO SMOKING HISTORY - 13 YEARS FOLLOW-UP OF 68,000 NORWEGIAN MEN AND WOMEN 35-49 YEARS

A total of 44,290 men and 24,535 women aged 35-49 have been followed w ith respect to different causes of death during 13.3 years on average. A detailed history of smoking, together with other important risk fac tors, were recorded in a standardized way. Compared with the classical American and British studies, the excess mortality for the smokers wa s largely the same for the majority of causes. The exceptions were cer ebrovascular mortality and suicides and accidents, which were more str ongly related to smoking in this study. Furthermore, men who smoked on ly pipe, had nearly the same coronary heart disease mortality as men w ho smoked only cigarettes. The same applies to lung cancer mortality. Among men who had quit cigarette smoking, the coronary heart disease m ortality decreased with time since quitting to almost the level of the never cigarette smokers after 5 years or more.