RCP comment on care of people with alcohol-related illness

Commenting on the report, Sir Richard Thompson, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said:

Admissions to hospital for alcohol related liver disease and deaths are on the increase and particularly affect younger patients. This report emphasises the variation across the country in specialist care in hospital for these patients, and suggests how much needs to be done to bring hospital services up to an acceptable standard. Every patient should also have access to an alcohol support service. There is a feeling that these sick patients are denied active treatment in high dependency beds because they are thought to be irrecoverable. I hope that this report will stimulate trusts to appoint more gastroenterologists with an interest in diseases of the liver and 7 day alcohol support nurses.

Sir Ian Gilmore, Royal College of Physicians special adviser on alcohol and chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK, said:

This report highlights the plight of patients dying from advanced liver damage caused by alcohol and the often inadequate response from our acute hospital services that are under strain. As well as raising standards of care for these patients, we need to make sure we can intervene earlier to prevent this shocking loss of young lives.

We know that early detection and advice for problem drinkers is highly effective and that population-based public health interventions such as a minimum unit price for alcoholic drinks would save thousands of lives each year. The Secretary of State for Health is committed to reducing premature mortality, and to achieve this we have to go urgently ‘upstream’ and implement evidence-based strategies for preventing alcohol-related deaths.

For further information, please contact Andrew McCracken on +44 (0)203 075 1354 / 07990 745 608, or email andrew.mccracken@rcplondon.ac.uk