The rates of smoking among male physicians were alarmingly high when compared with male physicians in Canada (8%) [21], Switzerland (12.6%) [22] and Japan (16.2%) [23].
However, observed differences might be affected by the definition of a smoker and distribution of gender and age among physicians.
For example, in the Swiss study [21], smokers and former smokers were defined according to whether they smoked one cigarette daily while in our study we considered five packs or 100 cigarettes smoked in the past as the cut off point for former smokers as per CDC guidelines [17].
Additionally, there was a male predominance of 84% and a relatively older age compared with the population in our study (51 vs 45 years of age).
In comparison with the Bahraini general population [5], the prevalence of current smokers of all forms was less (9% vs 19.9%). However, the rate of waterpipe smoking among male physicians was higher than in male adults in the general population (12% vs 10.8%) Table 3.