RESEARCH ARTICLE The effects of smoke-free

ng be oc m es ua in the developed world [3]. According to the US Surgeon General’s report, tobacco smoking is a major population differnce existed among countries and cities [8]. A grow-ing body of evidence has suggested that the rate of acute Lin et al. BMC Public Health 2013, 13:529 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/13/529on the risk of acute MI in the general population, and toResearch Institute of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the articlerisk factor for coronary heart disease, the leading cause of deaths in the US [4]. Including acute myocardial infarction (MI), coronary heart disease has remained the second leading cause of deaths over the past three decades [4,5]. The harmful health effects of smoking has prompted myocardial infarction significantly decreased after the introduction of the smoking ban regulations, usually within a short time period. However, the results published so far showed a large variation of the effect size, ranging from 5 % to 70 % [9]. On the other hand, the relationship of this reduction with the corresponding smoking prevalence change remained unknown. This study performed a sys-tematic literature review and meta-analysis with the aim to estimate the overall effect size of smoke-free legislation