Alcohol attributable fractions for Ireland: Alcohol attributable deaths and hospitalisations

Background:

Ireland has one of the highest levels of alcohol consumption in the world and is internationally renowned for its drinking culture.

Aim

To calculate Irish alcohol attributable fractions (AAFs) and to apply these measurements to existing data in order to quantify the impact of alcohol on hospital bed days, hospital costs and deaths.

Methods:

Distribution of alcohol exposure was taken from a major national survey of Ireland, SLAN 2007, and corrected for per capita consumption from sales data. For chronic disease, relative risks were taken from the published literature and combined with exposure to calculate age- and sex specific AAFs. For injury, AAFs were taken directly from the international literature. Information on deaths, hospitalisations and hospital costs were taken from the national datasets.

Results

In Ireland, over the five year period from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2004 alcohol caused 4.4% (6,584) of deaths, 10.8% (131,252) of all-cause PYLL and 10.3% (3,429,080) of hospitalisations in all ages.

Alcohol prevented 2.7% (3,976) of deaths, 1.5% (18,286) of all-cause PYLL and 1.6% (529,239) of total hospital bed days in all ages.

Alcohol attributable beddays cost the health system 935,602,032 Euro over this time period.

Conclusions :

Alcohol consumption in Ireland is responsible for an unacceptable burden of disease and policies known to effectively reduce consumption must be implemented.