How does real‐time video counselling compare to telephone co | Figure 1

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How does real‐time video counselling compare to telephone counselling to help people quit smoking?

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Background

Video communication software like Skype and FaceTime allows counsellors to see and hear people over the Internet to help them quit smoking. Video counselling could help large numbers of people to quit smoking because more than four billion people use the Internet, and video communication software is free.

Study characteristics

We searched for studies on 13 August 2019, and found two that met our inclusion criteria. Our main focus was to learn if video counselling delivered individually or to a group could help people quit smoking and to learn how it compared with other types of support to help people quit. We also studied the effect of real‐time video counselling on the number of times people tried to quit, the number of sessions they completed, their satisfaction with the counselling, their relationship or bond with the counsellor and the costs of using video communication to help people quit smoking. Both studies took place in the USA, and included people from rural areas or women with HIV. Both studies gave one‐to‐one video sessions to individuals. There were eight video sessions in one study and four video sessions in the other study. Both studies compared video counselling to telephone counselling and looked at whether people quit smoking, the number of sessions they completed and their satisfaction with the programme. One study examined the number of times people tried to quit and one study looked at the relationship or bond with the counsellor.

Key findings

It is unclear how video counselling compares with telephone counselling in terms of helping people to quit smoking. People who used video counselling were more likely than those who used telephone counselling to recommend the programme to a friend or someone in their family, but we found no differences in how satisfied they were, the number of video or telephone sessions completed, whether all sessions were completed and in the relationship or bond with the counsellor.

Quality of evidence

We rated the quality of the evidence for smoking cessation to be very low. There were only two studies, and the limitations in these studies made it difficult to draw reliable conclusions about whether video counselling can help people to quit smoking. This should be taken into account when looking at these findings.

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