This is a descriptive observational study that aimed at identifying beliefs according to centrality/periphery by verifying how they interfere in the behavior of patients with coronary diseases regarding their adherence or non-adherence to smoking. The belief-related frameworks mentioned in the literature were used and findings, pointed out from the analysis of the interviews with 56 people with coronary diseases who were inpatients in a hospital in the interior of São Paulo State, showed a prevalence of primitive beliefs with zero consensus and a tendency to centrality that enabled the identification of hiding factors to the adherence to therapeutic recommendations by health professionals as well as inferences concerning the reluctance to behavioral changes presented by the population.
coronary diseases; smoking