Increased awareness enhances physician recognition of the role of smoking in chronic pancreatitis

Abstract Background We have previously reported that physicians under-recognize smoking as a chronic pancreatitis (CP) risk factor. We hypothesized that availability of empiric data will influence physician recognition of this relationship. Methods We analyzed data from 508 CP patients prospectively enrolled in the North American Pancreatitis Study-2 Continuation and Validation (NAPS2-CV) or NAPS2-Ancillary (AS) studies (2008–2014) from 26 US centers who self-reported ever-smoking. Information on smoking status, physician-defined etiology and identification of smoking as a CP risk factor was obtained from structured patient and physician questionnaires. We compared how often physician identified smoking as a CP risk factor in NAPS2-CV/NAPS2-AS studies with NAPS2-original study (2000–2006). Results Enrolling physician identified smoking as a risk factor in significantly (all p  Conclusions Availability of empiric data likely enhanced physician recognition of the association between smoking and CP. Wide-spread dissemination of this information could potentially curtail smoking rates in subjects with and those at risk of CP.