Scottish Public Health Observatory quarterly update
March 2023

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides the Scottish Public Health Observatory (ScotPHO) quarterly update on a number of topic areas. Of these topics, the drugs, Chronic liver disease and tobacco pages contain new data.

These statistics contain new data i.e. the first release on 21 March 2023 has been revised. An error was identified in the data extract used for calculation of the injectable buprenorphine patient estimates and this has now been corrected. The impact of this is that the figures previously published on ScotPHO were an underestimate of the number of people who are prescribed this medication. Please note the corrected methodology has also been applied to the historic data and all figures revised accordingly.

Main points

Chronic liver disease.

• There were 17.9 chronic liver disease deaths per 100,000 population in Scotland in 2021.
• In 2021, chronic liver disease death rates were 5.8 times higher in the most deprived areas (38.7 per 100,000 population) compared to the least deprived areas (6.7 per 100,000 population).
• In 2021, male death rates for chronic liver disease were nearly two times higher than those for females (23.3 compared to 12.6 per 100,000 population).
• In 2021/22, there were 200.8 hospital stays per 100,000 population including a diagnosis of chronic liver disease, an increase of 9.4% on the previous year.

Drugs - Treatment for drug use

Injectable buprenorphine:

• In 2021/22-Q4^R, it was estimated that 1,678 people were prescribed injectable buprenorphine in Scotland.

Quarterly Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST) patient estimates:

• In 2022/23-Q2, OST was prescribed to an estimated minimum of 29,405 people in Scotland.

Drugs: Health Harms

Maternity and Neonatal discharges:

• In 2021/22, drug use was recorded in 1.7% (786) of 46,793 maternities in Scotland. This was approximately the same as 2020/21 (1.7%).
• The drugs most frequently recorded as being used during pregnancy were cannabis (9.3 per 1,000 maternities) and opiates/opioids (3.2 per 1,000 maternities). Recorded opiate/opioid use during pregnancy decreased over the time series from 9.7 per 1,000 maternities in 2011/12 to 3.2 per 1,000 maternities in 2021/22.
• In 2021/22, 129 (0.3%) of 47,249 babies born in Scotland were recorded as having been affected by, or having withdrawal symptoms from, maternal use of drugs of addiction.

Tobacco

• Covid pandemic restrictions in 2020 and 2021 resulted in changes to the Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) methodology and the resulting smoking prevalence responses to the 2021 SHeS survey are much lower than expected and should be treated with caution.
• Smoking attributable deaths and hospital admissions in Scotland are calculated using "smoking prevalence" figures obtained from the SHeS. This means that the reported smoking attributable deaths and hospital admissions figures for 2021 should also be treated with caution.
• The percentage of pregnant women who identified as smokers when attending their first antenatal booking appointment has continued its downward trend during 2021/22. This figure has fallen from 30.7% in 1997/98 to 11.8% in 2021/22.

Background

The Scottish Public Health Observatory collaboration is led by PHS and includes the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, National Records of Scotland, the Medical Research Council/Chief Scientist Office Social and Public Health Sciences Unit and the Scottish Learning Disabilities Observatory. The aim of the collaboration is to make public health information more accessible, to promote the reduction in inequalities and to inform health improvement in Scotland.

Further information

Data from this publication are available from the publication page on the ScotPHO website (external website).

The next release of this publication will be 27 June 2023.