Alcohol blamed for 6,500 dead in five years.

The research, presented in Dublin yesterday, found alcohol was responsible for 6,584 deaths from 2000 to 2004.

It also blamed alcohol for more than three million hospitalisations – 10.3 per cent of all hospitalisations – over the period, and the cost of the inpatient bed days was over €930 million.

Dr Jennifer Martin, a specialist registrar in public health medicine, said while alcohol consumption over the five years of the study would also have prevented more than 3,000 deaths, the years of life lost as a result of alcohol consumption outweighed the years of life saved by a factor of eight. This was because lives saved by alcohol were mainly those of older people who consumed only very small amounts of drink.

She said Ireland had one of the highest levels of alcohol consumption in the world and the percentage of deaths caused by alcohol here is higher than in many other European countries.

While alcohol caused 4.4 per cent of deaths in the Republic, the rate in the UK was 3.1 per cent and in Sweden 3.5 per cent, she said.

Dr Martin explained that previous studies had underestimated the number of deaths and hospitalisations attributable to alcohol. She said previous studies looked at deaths due solely to alcohol, such as cirrhosis and poisoning, whereas the latest study included deaths in which alcohol was a factor, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. The alcohol-attributable fraction of these diseases was calculated and included in the overall figures.

“I included every disease for which alcohol is causally related to some extent,” she said.

“This is the first major study in Ireland that looked at all hospitalisations and deaths due to alcohol rather than hospitalisations and deaths in either people who were very high risk drinkers, ie alcoholics, or for diseases that are very highly associated with alcohol like liver disease, so this is a much broader picture,” she said.

She pointed out that the costs of hospital bed days attributable to alcohol outlined in the study, while “horrendous”, were only inpatient hospital costs “so the actual cost to the health system is likely to be many times higher”.

The research was presented at the 2009 Summer Scientific Meeting of the faculty of public health medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland.

Dr Tony Holohan, chief medical officer at the Department of Health, said efforts must be redoubled to limit harm caused by drinking.

Another study presented at the meeting looked at the extent to which suicides may be misclassified in inquests and therefore under-reported.

Dr Ella Arensman, of the National Suicide Research Foundation, who looked at trends between 1980 and 2005, said that 88 people who died by hanging had open verdicts returned at their inquests after the cause of death was undetermined. She said 737 who died from drowning also had open verdicts returned. The increasing number of open verdicts is “worrying”, she said.

She also said the foundation was increasingly coming across families affected by more than one suicide. One family in Cork had lost three members to suicide over the past two years, she said.

Geoff Day, director of the National Office for Suicide Prevention, said the HSE is to launch a mental health leaflet for those who have recently lost their jobs.

Source: Eithne Donnellan, The Irish Times, 27/05/2009.