Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
The Dr Foster report on hospital admissions linked to drink or drugs details the latest instalment in our troubled relationship with alcohol. More than half a million people have been admitted over three years with alcohol- and drug-related harm and the cost to the NHS is ?607m a year. The vast majority of these admissions were for alcohol-related illness, and they were not for trivial problems.
Alcohol damages the body in various ways, some clearly related to its use. With alcohol-related liver disease or dependency, alcohol is the primary cause and a clear diagnosis can be recorded for each patient. But "alcohol stealth diseases" cause harm in more subtle ways and are one of many factors, for example in more than half of deaths from epilepsy, and a third of suicides. In men, alcohol is linked to more than a quarter of deaths from high blood pressure, cardiac arrhythmias, and cancer of the mouth and oesophagus. In women, more than 8% of deaths from breast cancer are alcohol-related, although they are never recorded as such.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/dec/08/alcohol-drugs-policy-nhs-dr-foster-report
Alcohol damages the body in various ways, some clearly related to its use. With alcohol-related liver disease or dependency, alcohol is the primary cause and a clear diagnosis can be recorded for each patient. But "alcohol stealth diseases" cause harm in more subtle ways and are one of many factors, for example in more than half of deaths from epilepsy, and a third of suicides. In men, alcohol is linked to more than a quarter of deaths from high blood pressure, cardiac arrhythmias, and cancer of the mouth and oesophagus. In women, more than 8% of deaths from breast cancer are alcohol-related, although they are never recorded as such.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/dec/08/alcohol-drugs-policy-nhs-dr-foster-report