Whats the best way to use urinary cotinine levels to monitor smoking cessation efforts?
The sensitivity of urinary cotinine measurements is ideal for monitoring smoking cessation efforts, especially if the FBR is informed of the perceived smoking behavior of the patient. This will allow the appropriate dilution to be used, thus improving turn around time. If possible, collect the urine samples at approximately the same time of day to reduce diurnal variation. Determination of the creatinine level for each urine sample as a measurement of dilution will help the user to establish cotinine trend among serial samples.
