London, Jan 25 (THAINDIAN NEWS) A new study claims that kicking the habit of smoking can actually double the chances of survival in people who suffer from lung cancer. This study was published in the online edition of the British Medical Journal. It saw the effects of smoking on people who suffer from lung cancer and found that, smokers who quit had a greater chance of survival, than those who continued to puff away. And these results were particularly valid for patients who had cancer in the early stages.

It is well known that smoking increases the risk of having lung cancer. Lifelong smokers have a 20% more risk than the non-smokers. University of Birmingham researchers studied and analyzed the results of over 10 such studies. These 10 studies basically studied the effects that kicking the butt had on patients with lung cancer.

The study revealed that people who continued to smoke even after a diagnosis of early stage lung cancer had a substantially greater risk of death and a much higher risk of the tumor relapse, vis-à-vis with those who stopped smoking at that time.