Why women's love affair with booze is killing them

Dr Orla Crosbie has worked as a hepatologist at CUH for two decades and has seen the typical inpatient with severe alcoholic liver disease change from mostly middle-age men to a higher percentage of younger females

Excess alcohol consumption causes fatty liver, which is fully reversible in the early stages. Ongoing consumption silently (and that’s the deadly part, there are often no telling or early signs) leads to scarring or fibrosis and eventually the worst form of liver disease, cirrhosis.  File photo: Katie Collins/PA

I read the fourth Health Research Board (HRB) overview on the alcohol situation in Ireland (Alcohol consumption, alcohol-related harm and alcohol policy in Ireland, 2021) with enthusiasm, wondering if it would or could possibly surprise me in any way. 

Working as a hepatologist in Cork University Hospital for the last 18 years, my practice is awash with patients with alcohol problems and indeed the HRB overview was a sobering read, things are as bad as I thought.