Recommendations for preventing lung cancer include the following:

• Stop smoking. All patients who currently smoke (or have recently quit) should be offered best practice tobacco dependence treatment and an opt-out referral to a behavioural intervention service such as Quitline 13 78 48, and be prescribed smoking cessation pharmacotherapy, if clinically appropriate. Conversations about smoking can be framed using the Ask, Advise, Help model:
  • Ask all patients if they smoke and document the response in their medical record.
  • Advise all patients who smoke to quit in a clear, non-confrontational and personalised way, and advise of the best ways to quit.
  • Help all patients who smoke to quit by offering a referral for behavioural intervention (e.g. Quitline 13 78 48) and/or prescribing pharmacotherapy (e.g. nicotine replacement therapy).
• Avoid exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke. Smoking cessation care should be offered to the patient’s partner (and significant others) who smoke.
• Prevent occupational exposure to asbestos, silica, radon, heavy metals, diesel exhaust and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (Malhotra et al. 2016).
• Take regular, moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity (Moore et al. 2016)