Table 2.

Dependence and dose of nicotine in treatment

• The nicotine dose should be guided by measures of dependence

• The higher strength forms of nicotine replacement are particularly recommended for high dependence smokers

• For nicotine therapy, high dependence smoking is typically considered to be at least 15-20 cigarettes a day and/or smoking within 30 minutes of waking

Nicotine therapy will be covered in a later article in this series