The draft cabinet committee paper seen by the Times is based on forecasts from the controversial study into the predicted impact of quitting the EU published by George Osborne in April during the referendum campaign.
However, the impact of quitting on individual diseases is not modelled.
The QBM only considers the impact of quitting on the smoker.
It would even be possible to indicate the impact of quitting at various times in the future.
The impact of quitting smoking has been analyzed in only a few studies [ 10, 13, 14], but in none of these publications was the decrease in risk significant.
Sarna et al 12 evaluated the impact of quitting smoking on changes in HRQOL over an 8-year period among women in two cohorts.
[ 3- 5] These analyses have found that interventions that encourage and facilitate quitting are very cost-effective, with net cost savings in some instances.[ 5] However the economic impact of quitting on macular degeneration has not been analysed.
Although health care providers may have tools to educate their patients about the impact of quitting smoking, they may still be lacking points of reference and achievable benefits of behavioural change that can be discussed with patients.
When investigating the impact of quitting cigarette smoking there was an obvious decrease from an OR of 1.11 (95% CI 0.69-1.79) in smokers quitting less than 15 years ago to an OR of 0.44 (95% CI 0.26-0.74) in those who quit 28 or more years ago.
So, in summary, the QBM under-estimates the benefits of quitting, as the model only considers the impact of quitting on a sub-set of the adverse health effects of smoking and the assumptions underpinning the parameter estimates were mostly conservative.
