Promoting smoking cessation during pregnancy: A feasibility and pilot trial of a digital storytelling intervention delivered via text-messaging.
Emma King, Helen Cheyne, Purva Abhyankar and 7 others
PMID 35063311WHAT IT FOUND
Recruitment and follow-up were hard, but pregnant smokers who gave feedback liked the text stories and mostly stayed in the trial.
Quit-rate data were too sparse to show whether the texts helped women stop smoking.
Key findings
01Recruitment was low: 54 women agreed to be contacted and 28 consented.
02Retention was 87% in the intervention group and 77% in the control group, and participants who gave feedback were generally positive about the texts.
03The proportion not smoking at 36 weeks pregnant was higher in the intervention group, which received text messages plus usual care, but numbers were too small to draw conclusions.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This was a pilot and feasibility study, not powered to detect between-group differences or estimate effect sizes. Recruitment was much lower than planned, so the study did not test whether the methods could support a full-scale trial. Many participants were uncontactable at follow-up, so smoking outcome data were sparse. Researchers could not be blinded to allocation. Usual care varied between sites, so the control condition was not the same everywhere. The text-message software could show that messages were received but not whether they were opened, so engagement with the content was uncertain. Acceptability feedback came mainly from intervention-group participants in short telephone interviews, and not all participants were contactable at each time point.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the higher proportion not smoking at 36 weeks, or the fact that all abstinent participants were in the intervention group, which received text messages plus usual care, as evidence that the texts alone worked. This pilot was not powered, many outcome data were missing, and the authors said the numbers were too small to draw conclusions.