More than one in three smokers who underwent surgery for early-stage lung cancer had resumed smoking within 12 months of their surgery, HealthDay News reported Dec. 11.

Documenting how difficult it is for regular smokers to quit, a study of 154 cancer surgery patients in the United States found that 43 percent picked up a cigarette again within a year after the surgery, with 37 percent actively smoking. Of those who had resumed smoking, 60 percent had done so less than two months after the surgery.

Researchers found that the patients who resumed smoking the soonest were those who had waited the longest to give up smoking before the surgery, and who also considered smoking a pleasurable activity that they would have difficulty stopping.

"The results suggest that patients who wait until cancer surgery to quit smoking need assistance from the medical community to help them stay away from cigarettes, and that this intervention should begin as soon as possible after treatment," said study lead author Mark S. Walker, Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.

Study results were published in the December issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention.