Question:

MethodsStudy design and participants

This was a pilot two arm, parallel group, randomized controlled trial, conducted at the San Francisco Veteran's Affairs Medical Center, which is affiliated with the University of California, San Francisco, studying the use of e-cigarettes (versus nicotine patches) for perioperative smoking cessation. Participants were eligible if they presented to the anesthesia preoperative (APO) clinic for elective surgery 3 or more days before surgery, were current cigarette smokers of more than two cigarettes per day having smoked at least once in the last 7 days, and could provide consent. Participants were excluded if they exclusively used other forms of tobacco (e.g.,pipe tobacco) or marijuana only, were pregnant or breast-feeding, had an unstable cardiac condition (e.g.,unstable angina, unstable arrhythmia), were currently using smoking cessation pharmacotherapy or were already enrolled in a smoking cessation trial, or currently used e-cigarettes on a daily basis. This study was approved by the UCSF Committee on Human Research (14-15274) and the San Francisco VA Human Research Protection Program and was registered on clinicaltrials.gov (NCT02482233) prior to enrollment of the first patient.

1. I need the primary research question.