Increasing alcohol consumption leads to severe liver problems for some Albertans.
There was an increase in a condition called alcoholic hepatitis that started at the beginning of the pandemic.
“This condition is serious. About seven or eight percent of the people die in the hospital, “said Dr. Abdel-Aziz Shaheen at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary said.
He is the lead author of a study that showed that hospitalizations for alcoholic hepatitis increased dramatically during the first wave of the pandemic, which was published in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
“We were surprised by the number of cases we saw, almost double the rates before the pandemic. During those first six months, about nine percent of each month in the hospitalization increased, ”Shaheen said.
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He said the research covers the period between March to September of 2020, which also coincided with higher liquor sales.
Another finding was the change in the patients being treated.
“We found they are younger, live mainly in rural areas and they are getting sicker,” Shaheed said.
Shaheen said in the second wave, he continued to see patients come in with significant liver damage.
“Some of them required ICU admission and unfortunately some of them do not. When they are admitted, they are not admitted for a short period of time. The average duration of admission is about two weeks, ”said Shaheen.
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Emergency room visits related to alcohol use, according to dr. Eddy Lang increased by 20 percent in the fall of 2020.
An article co-authored by Dr Lang showed that alcohol use went from the fifth highest cause of hospitalization in Alberta to the third during the first half year of the pandemic.
“Alcohol is like throwing fuel on the fire of mental illness,” said Lang, Calgary Zone’s head of emergency medicine.
“Patients who suffer from anxiety and depression and other mental health diseases often turn to alcohol or other drugs such as marijuana to use self-medication and this is almost always a bad thing, because the alcohol harms judgment and there will almost always be more negative consequences. of alcohol use in the context of mental illness, then there will be benefits. ”
Data is currently being collected on the fourth wave of the pandemic and is expected to be released in early 2022.
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