Alcohol-related Liver Disease Special Interest Group
Alcohol-related Liver Disease Special Interest Group
The Alcohol-related Liver Disease (ArLD) Special Interest Group (SIG) has been established to address issues relating to the commonest cause of advanced liver disease in the United Kingdom. Despite the frequency of ArLD, there are many inconsistencies and uncertainties regarding its management. The SIG will address early diagnosis, the natural history and management of ArLD with a view to quality improvement in patient care and coordination of effective clinical research. The group aims to bring clinical hepatology together with laboratory, addiction, primary care and public health specialists.
The SIG lead is Dr Richard Parker of Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
Trainee leads are: Dr Laura Burke of Leeds Teaching Hospital and Dr Vikram Bains of King's College Hospital.
If anyone wishes to join the group please contact the BASL secretariat on sigs@basl.org.uk
National ArLD Audit - ALERT UK
The BASL ArLD special interest group has just launched a national audit (ALERT UK) on the in-patient management of patients with alcohol related liver disease (ArLD). We are keen to get as many sites as possible involved to get a representative sample of current care in the UK.
'ALERT UK' is multicentre retrospective audit and has been endorsed by the BSG, BASL and Torch UK.
In short, we only require data from 20 patients from each site and have a 'pre-coded' spreadsheet based on HES codes to send to your hospital data team to easily identify the patients for inclusion.
All contributors will be named as PubMed citable authors on any publications.
Further information including the full audit protocol can be found on the BSG website
Each site can have up to 4 audit members made up of any of the clinical team involved in the care of inpatients with ArLD ( eg doctors of any grade, nurses, members of alcohol care team, allied health professionals etc)
If you are interested please register your site >here<
If you have any questions please contact us : alertaudituk@gmail.com
Please spread the word in your region if you think of others who may be interested in participating.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Many Thanks,
ALERT UK steering group
News
The Alcohol-related liver disease Special Interest Group has recently generated and published quality standards for the care of people with ARLD see https://bmjopengastro.bmj.com/content/10/1/e001221 . To build on this the SIG will shortly be launching a national audit to assess how we measure up to these standards and to look for potential ways we can improve.
Resources and meeting downloads
Meeting - 24 June 2022
Minutes - Download Minutes_220624 BASL ArLD SIG minutes.pdf
National Alcohol Conference 2024 Meeting
Slide decks:
Download Ewan Forrest NAC Conference Slide Deck.pdf
Download Richard Parker NAC Conference Slide Deck.pdf
Download Tim Cross NAC Conference Slide Deck.pdf
National Service Evaluation
The effect of lockdown on patients with alcohol-related liver disease: a national service evaluation
Many people have been consuming more alcohol during lockdown, especially those with hazardous or harmful drinking behavior. Anecdotal observations suggest an increase in the number and severity of admissions of patients with alcohol-related liver disease (ArLD) since lockdown was implemented with more patients presenting with advanced disease including variceal haemorrhage and alcoholic hepatitis. The ArLD Special Interest Group aims to perform a systematic national service evaluation of ArLD hospital episodes to determine whether the number of ArLD patients and the severity of their disease is different post-lockdown compared to a similar period in 2019. Working in collaboration with Public Health colleagues, this information will be combined with a national dataset to help us understand the effect of lockdown on our vulnerable patient group and to plan alcohol services at a local and national level.
The final report is available below and thank you for contributing to this service evaluation.
Download ArLD SIG evaluation of admissions FINAL REPORT.pdf
BASL/BSG Alcohol Use Disorder Webinar Series Videos - 2021
This series of 6 webinars will discuss different elements of the management of a patient with an alcohol use disorder through an individual patient’s journey from initial presentation, through to the development of alcohol dependency, end stage liver disease and transplantation.
Webinar 1: 10th February
Title: Identification and assessment of alcohol use disorder
Speaker: Dr Edward Day, Consultant Addiction Psychiatrist, University of Birmingham
Watch the webinar recording by clicking > here.
Webinar 2: 17th March
Title: Management of acute alcohol withdrawal
Speaker: Dr Ewen Forrest, Consultant Hepatologist, Glasgow Royal Infirmary
Watch the webinar recording by clicking > here .
Webinar 3: 14th April
Title: Pharmacological management of alcohol use disorder
Speaker: Dr Paul Richardson, Consultant Hepatologist, Liverpool University NHS Trust
Watch the webinar recording by clicking > here .
Webinar 4: 19th May
Title: Psychosocial management of alcohol use disorder
Speaker: Dr Peter Rice, Addiction Psychiatrist, NHS Tayside
Watch the webinar recording by clicking > here .
Webinar 5: 9th June
Title: Using motivational interviewing in clinical encounters
Speaker: Professor Eilish Gilvarry, Consultant Psychiatrist in addictions, Newcastle Addictions Service, Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne & Wear NHS
Watch the webinar recording by clicking > here.
