Smoking cigars carries the same risk of death as smoking cigarettes, a new review finds.
“The results reinforce the fact that cigar smoking carries many of the same health risks as cigarette smoking. Cigar smoking is linked to fatal oral, esophageal, pancreatic, laryngeal and lung cancers, as well as heart disease and aortic aneurysm,” lead researcher Cindy Chang, from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said in a news release from BMC Public Health. The findings were published recently in this journal.
Chang and her colleagues found that people who only smoked cigars and didn’t use other tobacco products had an increased risk of death from all causes. The risk of death from oral, esophageal and lung cancers was higher for cigar smokers, whether they inhaled the cigar smoke or not, according to the review.
The review also found that cigar smokers who previously smoked cigarettes had a much higher risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease than those who had not previously smoked cigarettes.