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Alcohol-related Hospital Admissions

Volume 448: debated on Thursday 6 July 2006

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people (a) under and (b) over the age of 18 years were admitted to hospital for alcohol-related problems in the last year for which figures are available, broken down by region. (81693)

The information requested is shown in the table, by Government Office Region. It provides data on finished admission episodes for people under and over 18 years admitted to hospital for alcohol related problems in 2004-05.

Counts of finished admission episodes for selected1 alcohol related diseases by regional office of residence and age grouping in national health service hospitals 2004-05.

1 Alcohol related diseases defined as following ICD-10 codes recorded in primary diagnosis.

F10 Mental and behavioural disorders due to use of alcohol K70 Alcoholic liver disease T51 Toxic effect of alcohol

Regional office of residence

Aged under 18

Aged 18 and over

Age not known

Northern and Yorkshire

742

6,013

*

Trent

453

4,542

West Midlands

573

4,976

North West

949

8,693

*

Eastern

356

3,557

*

London

410

6,906

15

South East

799

5,990

*

South West

429

3,690

7

Northern Ireland

18

Scotland

*

48

Wales

20

138

England-not otherwise specified

28

1,017

31

Foreign (including Isle of Man and Channel Islands)

14

97

*

Unknown

33

614

33

England

4,809

46,299

95

Notes:Finished admission episodes. A finished admission episode is the first period of in-patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. Admissions do not represent the number of in-patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the year. Primary diagnosis The primary diagnosis is the first of up to 14 ( seven prior to 2002-03) diagnosis fields in the hospital episode statistics (HES) data set and provides the main reason why the patient was in hospital. Primary care trust (PCT) and strategic health authority (SNA) data quality PCT and SHA data was added to historic data-years in the HES database using 2002-03 boundaries, as a one-off exercise in 2004. The quality of the data on PCT of treatment and SHA of treatment is poor in 1996-97, 1997-98 and 1998-99, with over a third of all finished episodes having missing values in these years. Data quality of PCT of general practitioner (GP) practice and SHA of GP practice in 1997-98 and 1998-99 is also poor, with a high proportion missing values where practices changed or ceased to exist. There is less change in completeness of the residence-based fields over time, where the majority of unknown values are due to missing postcodes on birth episodes. Users of time series analysis including these years need to be aware of these issues in their interpretation of the data. Ungrossed data Figures have not been adjusted for shortfalls in data; that is the data are ungrossed. Low numbers Due to reasons of confidentiality, figures between one and five have been suppressed and replaced with an asterisk. Source: Hospital episode statistics (HES), The Information Centre for health and social care