Smoking and cardiovascular disease

Smoking increases the risk of in several ways:

Smoking damages the lining of the , including the arteries. The damage encourages the build-up of fatty material in the arteries. This can lead to a or a .
Inhalation of in cigarette smoke reduces the amount of oxygen that can be carried by the blood.
The in cigarette smoke increases the heart rate, putting strain on the heart.
Chemicals in cigarette smoke increase the likelihood of the , resulting in a heart attack or stroke.

Lung disease

Smoking may result in lung diseases.

A healthy lung on the left and a smoker's lung on the right — Image caption,
Sections of a healthy lung and a smoker's lung, showing tar deposits.

A person may develop – chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. This condition includes the diseases chronic and . In COPD:

smoking damages the and can eventually destroy many of the in the lungs
the airways become inflamed and , which normally traps particles in the lungs, builds up
the patient becomes breathless, and finds it more and more difficult to obtain the oxygen required for

The damage caused by COPD is permanent. The disease cannot be cured, and can result in death. It is essential that the person seeks medical help to try to prevent progression of the disease.

Lung cancer

The in cigarette smoke also cause lung cancer. Almost all cases of lung cancer are caused by smoking – smaller numbers of cases are linked with air pollution and from radon gas, a found in the environment in some parts of the country.

Many cases of lung cancer lead to death, although there have been improvements in diagnosis and treatment.

A graph showing number of adults who smoke and lung-cancer rates. — Figure caption,
A graph to illustrate adult lung cancer rates in the UK. Sources: Office for National Statistics, and Statista.

Note that the trend in the rate of developing lung cancer for women has been increasing, while in men it is decreasing. The main reason is because numbers of female smokers – unlike men – continued to increase in the 1950s and 1960s before starting to fall. Cancer may take some years to develop, so a fall in female rates of lung cancer is likely to occur later. Evidence also suggests that women are more susceptible to developing lung cancer.

Effects of smoking on babies

For mothers who smoke during pregnancy:

smoking increases the risk of
the babies and children are more likely to suffer from respiratory infections and an increased risk of
the long-term physical growth and intellectual development of the baby/child is affected
there is an increased risk of birth defects
the birthweight of the baby is reduced

When parents smoke, there is a greater risk of cot death – sudden infant death syndrome.

Graph showing effects of smoking on baby birth weight

Question

The bar chart shows that when mothers under the age of 20 smoke whilst pregnant, the birthweight of their babies is reduced.

Suggest two pieces of additional information that would need to be collected before drawing firm conclusions about the effect of mothers smoking on the birthweight of babies.

Monitoring and maintaining health - non-communicable - OCR GatewaySmoking and cardiovascular disease