Epidemiological profile of alcoholic liver disease hospital admissions in a Latin American country over a 10-year period

BACKGROUND Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) is a major cause of chronic liver disease worldwide. AIM To describe the epidemiological profile and mortality rates of patients with ALD admitted to public hospitals in different regions of Brazil from 2006 to 2015. METHODS This is a descriptive study that evaluated aggregate data from the five Brazilian geographic regions. RESULTS A total of 160093 public hospitalizations for ALD were registered. There was a 34.07% increase in the total number of admissions over 10 years, from 12879 in 2006 to 17267 in 2015. The region with the highest proportion (49.01%) of ALD hospitalizations was Southeast (n = 78463). The North region had the lowest absolute number of patients throughout the study period, corresponding to 3.9% of the total (n = 6242). There was a 24.72% increase in the total number of ALD deaths between 2006 and 2015. We found that the age group between 50 and 59 years had the highest proportion of both hospitalizations and deaths: 28.94% (n = 46329) of total hospital admissions and 29.43% (n = 28864) of all deaths. Men were more frequently hospitalized than women and had the highest proportions of deaths in all regions. Mortality coefficient rates increased over the years, and simple linear regression analysis indicated a statistically significant upward trend in this mortality (R² = 0.744). CONCLUSION Our study provides a landscape of the epidemiological profile of public hospital admissions due to ALD in Brazil. We detected an increase in the total number of admissions and deaths due to ALD over 10 years.