Prevalence of second-hand smoke exposure in houses in Turkey: a meta-analysis study

Abstract

Abstract Background Second hand smoke(SHS) exposure means breathing the air polluted by someone else's cigarette smoke. The aim of the study was to perform a meta-analysis of studies about the in-house second hand smoke exposure prevalence in Turkey. Methods PubMed, Web of Science, Turkey Citation Index, TR Index and the Cochrane library databases in the screening of articles published in Turkish and English languages “second hand smoke”, “prevalence” and “Turkey” keywords were used. Studies who were original, were cross-sectional, had the number of participants and the number of people exposed to in-house SHS, used age groups and were conducted in Turkey were in accordance with our inclusion criteria thus included in the study. Global tobacco surveys and studies using data from them were also included. OpenMeta[Analyst] program was used to calculate the prevalence rate of the study groups. Since the articles were p < 0.001 in the heterogeneity test, prevalence rate and 95% confidence intervals were calculated from the number of cases using the random effects model in group analysis. Results As a result of the scan, 59 articles were reached. Duplications were eliminated and summaries of the remaining articles were read as double-blind. Suitable for inclusion criteria and quality evaluation 11 studies were included in the meta analysis. Among them, 7 studies were conducted on people who are younger than 15 years. The meta analysis showed that the SHS exposure for those aged 15 and above was 12 097/30 138 (39.3%; 95% CI: 25.9-52.8) and for those younger than 15 was 57 028/112 547 (55.9%; 95% CI: 42.4-69.4). Conclusions As a result of the comprehensive literature research, it was found that the SHS exposure in houses is a huge problem for Turkey especially for the young people. Key messages The exposure to second-hand smoking in houses puts both youth and adult population’s health at risk in Turkey. Intervention programs should be commenced to tackle high exposure rates and in-house smoking.