Binge drinking’s illnesses: Women catching men

WOMEN are catching up with men in suffering more gruesome physical effects of binge drinking — such as torn bladders and pancreatitis.

Until now, doctors only expected to see men with ruptured bladders as a result of excessive amounts of alcohol.

But the latest issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) describes three cases of bladder rupture in women who attended a hospital in the space of 12 months.

Three out of 10 of all drinking occasions for Irish women result in binge drinking — the highest in Europe, compared with a fifth in Britain.

Consultant urologist at St James’s Hospital, Dublin, Thomas Lynch, said with women consuming increasing levels of alcohol, they were catching up with men in suffering the physical consequences.

Ireland’s drink culture is also resulting in a sharp increase in the numbers of young people being admitted to hospital with acute pancreatitis. There has been a tenfold increase in the condition since 2001 among women in their 20s.

A study by experts at Trinity College Dublin and Tallaght Hospital in Dublin examined the emergency admissions for acute pancreatitis between 1997 and 2004. Alcohol misuse is one of the main causes of acute pancreatitis, a potentially life-threatening disease.

Women who binge drink have a raised risk of their bladders bursting because they may not realise their bladders are full and a minor trauma, such as a fall, can further increase the pressure on a bladder and cause it to rupture.

In the BMJ report, urologist Mohantha Dooldeniya and his colleagues at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield, south of Leeds, said the cases of three young women initially confused doctors with their symptoms.

Each woman arrived at casualty the day after indulging in excessive drinking saying they felt more unwell than they might expect to feel, even with a massive hangover. All complained of lower abdominal pain.

Doctors initially diagnosed a urinary infection in two of the cases and prescribed antibiotics and rehydration. In the third case appendicitis was suspected.

All three women had to have their bladders sewn back together by surgeons.