Abstract

A survey of the smoking habits of 1217 outpatients undergoing upper gastrointestinal endoscopy was carried out over an 18 month period. Six hundred and twenty four were current smokers, 248 ex-smokers and 345 non-smokers. 11.9% of smokers had gastric ulcers, 7.7% of ex-smokers (p less than 0.025) and 4.6% of non-smokers (p less than 0.001). 2.8% of smokers had duodenal ulcers, 6.8% of ex-smokers (p less than 0.01) and 6.1% of non-smokers (p less than 0.001). There was a dose response effect between the number of cigarettes smoked and duodenal and gastric ulceration. Gastric cancer was also more frequent in smokers than non-smokers (p less than 0.01), but macroscopic oesophagitis less frequent (p less than 0.001). The results confirm the association between smoking and peptic ulcer.