CHEST: Docs Disagree on E-Cigarette Safety ... and on whether to recommend them for smoking cessation

"The vast majority of physicians who answered the survey -- about 88% -- reported that at least some of their patients had asked their opinion about e-cigarettes, and four out of five reported their patients were using e-cigarettes to stop smoking," Baldassarri said. Most surveyed physicians said they did not believe e-cigarettes were as effective for smoking cessation as first-line treatments like nicotine patches, nicotine gum or varenicline (Chantix), but when asked if they would recommend e-cigarettes to patients who had failed these first-line treatment, about half said they would. "This really gets the the heart of the controversy about whether these products should be recommended for smoking cessation," Baldassarri told MedPage Today. "We just don't have the studies to tell us if these products are safe and useful for smoking cessation, and we won't have them for a while." http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/CHEST/60991?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2016-10-25&eun=g721819d0r&pos=2