A systematic review of tobacco use among adolescents with physical disabilities

Objective: To provide a systematic review of tobacco use among adolescents with physical disabilities. Study design: A systematic review. Methods: A search was performed of English articles published prior to December 2014 in the PubMed database for studies examining smoking rates among adolescents with and without physical disabilities. Ten studies were retrieved (all cross-sectional surveys) of which six compared adolescent populations from nationally representative samples and four examined those based on convenience sampling. Pooled analyses of smoking rates by disability status were performed. Results: In studies from nationally representative samples (n = 6 studies), adolescents with physical disabilities were significantly more likely to use tobacco as compared to adolescents without (pooled analyses = 29.7% vs 23.3%). However, in studies from non-representative samples, adolescents with physical disabilities were less likely to use tobacco as compared to adolescents without (pooled analyses = 22.7% vs 39.1%). Conclusions: Adolescents with physical disabilities may have an increased risk of tobacco use relative to those without disabilities. Tailored tobacco use prevention and cessation strategies may be appropriate for this high-risk population. Future longitudinal studies which determine factors associated with tobacco use among adolescents with different disabilities should be considered to reduce the disproportionate tobacco use in this population.