A new study based in New Zealand has claimed that a major proportion of patients visiting a hospital emergency department (ED) are smokers, as compared to the rest of the NZ population.

The research was published in the latest issue of Emergency Medicine Australasia, the journal of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine.

The six-day study, involving over 500 patients with an underlying illness or an injury who were present for treatment at Wellington Hospital's emergency department, was conducted in August 2009.

The study, headed by emergency registrar Dr Abigail Lynch and Emergency Physician Dr Paul Quigley, claimed that over 33% of the patients were smokers, compared to 20.7% of the general population of New Zealand.

"Our results indicate that 74.9% of smokers want to quit and, of those wanting to quit, 76.3% took a quit smoking pack and showed an interest in receiving ED-based quit smoking advice", Dr Abigail Lynch revealed.

He further insisted that as a significant proportion of patients are ready to leave smoking, there is a need to deliver smoking advice to them through emergency departments only.

Besides, recent studies had highlighted that counseling by physicians can be highly useful for patients seeking to quit smoking.