Fabrizio Minervini ^1* Peter Kestenholz ¹ Frank Rassouli ² Susanne Pohle ² Nora Mayer ¹

• ¹ Lucerne Cantonal Hospital, University of Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland
• ² Clinic for Pneumology and Sleep Medicine, Cantonal Hospital St. Gallen, St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

Smoking, with a prevalence of about 25-30% in Switzerland, is proven to cause major systemic, avoidable diseases including lung cancer, increasing societies morbidity and mortality. Diverse strong quitting smoking recommendations have been made available providing advice facilitating smoking cessation globally. In other European countries like Germany, clinical practice guidelines for smoking cessation services have been implemented. However, in Switzerland, there is still no national consensus on a comprehensive smoking cessation program for lung cancer patients nor on the adequate provider. Our primary aim was to assess the current status of smoking cessation practice among specialists, mainly involved in lung cancer care, in Switzerland in order to uncover potential shortcomings.A self-designed 14-items questionnaire, which was reviewed and approved by our working group consisting of pneumologists and thoracic surgeons, on demographics of the participants, the status of smoking cessation in Switzerland and specialists' opinion on smoking cessation was sent to thoracic surgeons and pneumologists between January 2024 and March 2024 via the commercially available platform www.surveymonkey.com. DThe data was collected and analysed with descriptive statistics.Survey response rate was 22.25 %. Smoking cessation was felt to positively affect long term survival and perioperative outcome in lung cancer surgery. While 33 (37.08%) physicians were offering smoking cessation themselves usually and always (35.96%), only 12 (13.48%) were