Drinkers to be screened to help combat liver disease (From Daily Echo)
When news happens, text SDE and your photos or videos to 80360. Or contact us by email and phone.
Drinkers to be screened to help combat liver disease
2:29pm Saturday 10th May 2008 in In Depth reports
AT least 10,000 drinkers in Southampton are to take part in a groundbreaking screening programme to help spot people developing liver disease before it is too late.
The disease is known as a silent killer because at least one in five people who show signs of liver damage die within a matter of months.
Latest figures from Southampton General Hospital reveal there were at least 946 liver admissions last year - with more than 90 per cent of these due to alcohol.
Of these, 49 people died and the hospital's liver team is increasingly seeing more young people with end stage cirrhosis.
Click here to read about plans to calm revellers down with chill-out music
It's hoped the £240,000 screening programme - devised by University of Southampton liver expert Dr Nick Sheron - will pick up damage long before it would otherwise become evident.
"We are basically finding people who have liver disease but don't know they have liver disease, because there are lot of people out there in the community who have a problem and don't know about it," he said.
"This is because the development of liver disease is a completely silent process and you don't know it's happening until it is too late. The first thing you know about the liver scarring is so bad that you have essentially got liver failure."
A lifestyle questionnaire will be sent to 10,000 people from six general practices around Southampton and it's predicted 20 per cent of respondents will be drinking at levels that could lead to liver disease.
All of those people will be invited back to their practice where they will be interviewed by a nurse and given a blood test.
The test will reveal with 95 per cent accuracy whether they've got severe scarring or cirrhosis and with a 70 per cent accuracy whether they've got early stages of damage.
If they are found to be developing damage they will then be referred to a liver clinic and treated.
"Admissions are increasing 10 per cent a year and we are anticipating that to continue into the future," Dr Sheron said.
"People are getting liver disease younger and people are dying younger, the youngest I've had in the past year was 26 and I think one of my colleagues might have had an even younger death."
If the three-year programme proves successful it could be rolled out nationally.
Alison Rogers, British Liver Trust chief executive, said a national strategic approach covering both prevention and treatment was desperately needed.
She said shocking new statistics had revealed liver disease had climbed to be the fifth largest cause of death in the country and Britain was the only developed country where liver disease deaths were increasing.
