There were 338,000 admissions to hospital in 2017/18 where the main cause was due to drinking alcohol, according to new figures published by NHS Digital.
The figures, which have been published as part of Statistics on Alcohol, England 2019 reveal that this was similar to 2016/171 and 15% higher than a decade ago. Alcohol related admissions still account for a similar percentage of overall hospital admissions (2.1% in 2017/18, 2.1% in 2016/17 and 2.3% in 2007/08).
This is based on the narrow measure2 where an alcohol-related disease, injury or condition was the primary reason for a hospital admission or there was an alcohol-related external cause. A broader measure that looks at a range of other conditions that could be caused by alcohol shows 1.2 million admissions in 2017/18 although due to improvements in coding this is less comparable through time.
People aged 45 or over accounted for 69% of admissions where the main cause was due to alcohol.