WOMEN are developing alcoholic liver disease at a younger age in Scotland – with hundreds of patients diagnosed in their 20s and 30s.
Females are succumbing to liver damage due to heavy drinking earlier in life than men, and girls have been admitted to hospital with the problem as young as 16.
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The stark trend has been exposed by a groundbreaking study which reveals the devastating toll heavy drinking is taking on the Scottish population.
It found more than 35,000 people have been diagnosed with alcoholic liver disease in Scotland after being rushed to hospital since 1991.
Of these, 17 per cent died before they were discharged and more than half were dead within five years. The youngest female to lose her life was just 17.
Those who survived had to be re-admitted to hospital an average of three times a year, staying for more than a week each time, at a cost of £587 per day.
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Co-author of the research Dr Mathis Heydtmann, a gastroenterologist and liver specialist at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, said hospital staff in the west of Scotland were so used to seeing abnormal liver tests they had become “immune” to their significance.
“Some people are fed up with seeing people again and again because they have been told 100 times you need to stop drinking and they still come back in,” he said. “It makes it difficult for people to be as empathetic as they were the first time.”
Incidence of liver cirrhosis has risen dramatically in Scotland and particularly in Greater Glasgow and Clyde since the 1970s, while it has fallen in western Europe.
Dr Heydtmann said: “With the increase, GPs and other specialists have a resistance to referring patients to us because they know we will be flooded.
“Since I came to Scotland in 2007 the work has more than doubled.”
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But, he said, this meant some patients with potential liver damage were not being referred for further investigation until they became seriously ill. This suggests opportunities to prevent deterioration are being missed. The study
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