Smoking injures the heart, lungs and blood vessels. It causes your arteries to thicken and your blood vessels to narrow. Fat and plaque stick to the walls of your arteries, making it harder for blood to flow through them. This increases the risk of developing blood clots and can cause chest pain, high blood pressure and a higher heart rate.

Persons who smoke are at higher risk of having a heart attack, heart failure, stroke, lung cancer or dying prematurely.

This measure reports what percent of heart attack patients are given advice and counseling about quitting smoking.

A higher score is better than a lower one.

The chart above shows how Cedars-Sinai's performance on this measure compared with the top 10% of hospitals in the United States, the national average for hospitals, the top 10% of hospitals in California and the California average. These data reflect care given to patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from April through June 2007. The national and California data reflect care given to patients from April 2006 through March 2007.