Smoking Facts: Quitting smoking can reduce CVD risk by 39% within 5 years

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Cigarette smoking is responsible for 20% of CVD deaths in the United States.

Heavy cigarette smokers with at least a 20 pack-year smoking history can reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) by 39% within five years if they quit. But it takes at least five to 10 years, and perhaps up to 25 years after quitting, for CVD risk to become as low as that of a similar person who has never smoked.

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Cigarette smoking is responsible for 20% of CVD deaths in the United States.

The study used prospective data from 1954 through 2014 from 8,770 participants -- 3,805 from the Original cohort and 4,965 from the Offspring cohort -- to determine the effect of lifetime smoking and smoking cessation on the risk of CVD, which includes myocardial infarction, stroke, CVD death, and heart failure.

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"The Framingham Heart Study provides particularly robust data on lifetime smoking history," said lead author, Meredith Duncan, MA, who led the analyses for the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Senior author Hilary Tindle said, "The cardiovascular system begins to heal relatively quickly after quitting smoking, even for people who have smoked heavily over decades."

Tindle also urged smokers to act on these study results by putting out their cigarettes.