A RELAÇÃO ENTRE O TABAGISMO E A HOSPITALIZAÇÃO POR COVID-19: REVISÃO INTEGRATIVA

Smoking has a chronic evolution and kills more than 8 million people per year. Therefore, smoking causes extensive damage to individual making them more susceptible to infections. Cigarettes have more than 4,800 toxic substances that cause several morbidities. However, chemical dependency exposes smokers to several vulnerabilities, causing chronic illnesses, such as cancer, cardiovascular and lung diseases. In regard to Covid-19, this disease has a clinical spectrum ranging from asymptomatic infections to severe conditions, mainly pulmonary ones. Thus, the aim of this study is to identify the relationship between smoking and hospitalization and the severity of the Covid-19 infection based on publications with the scope of this study. This paper is an integrative descriptive literature review, with a qualitative approach, carried out in the second semester of 2020 considering the databases of the Virtual Health Library (VHL) and PubMed, by using the following descriptors (DeCS / MEsH): smoking, risk factors and coronavirus, under which 120 articles were found. After applying the inclusion criteria, 17 articles were selected for the integrative review. The results show that smoking prompts a predisposition to several diseases, causes alterations in the defense mechanism, besides incurring greater risks for infection during the act of smoking, contributing to a hospitalization increase and the aggravation of Covid-19. Given that, more strategies for smoking cessation are needed, in order to improve the quality and perspective of smokers' lives.