Frequently Asked Questions

Produces blood proteins that help your immune system function well, carry oxygen and enable clotting Stores and releases nutrients to your bloodstream Produces bile – the enzyme that helps help digest food Breaks down saturated fat and produces cholesterol out of it Stores glucose in the form of glycogen Keeps your body free from toxins.

When the liver is irreversibly damaged and loses its ability to carry out its normal functions, it is called liver failure. Acute Liver failure, wherein the liver fails to work all of a sudden, is usually caused as an after-effect of certain medication or infection. Chronic liver failure or complete damage of the liver is a life threatening condition that sets in gradually, over many years. The causes can be cirrhosis or cancer of the liver.

Liver cirrhosis is a slowly progressing disease in which scar tissue replaces healthy liver tissue, causing permanent and irreparable damage to the liver. The reasons for liver cirrhosis can be: Hepatitis B or C infection Alcoholic liver diseases Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (fat build-up in the liver cells) Genetic and auto immune disorders Congenital birth defects According to the National Institute of Health, liver cirrhosis is the 12th leading cause of death by disease in India .

Alcohol is a toxin that can cause irreversible damage to your liver. Every time you drink, your liver does its best to break down the alcohol and expel the toxins from your body. However, if the alcohol content is beyond what the liver can handle, it will gradually start losing its ability to function, which in turn leads to several complications.​

The three major liver diseases induced by alcohol are alcoholic fatty liver disease, alcoholic hepatitis and alcoholic cirrhosis. Alcoholic Fatty Liver Excess alcohol consumption leads to accumulation of extra fat in your liver.
The first stage of alcohol-related liver disease, this condition usually goes unnoticed as there might be no symptoms at all. However, some patients do present symptoms like unexplained fatigue and weakness. The fat accumulation in the liver will mostly go away by itself if you stop drinking alcohol at this stage. Those who are overweight and have diabetes will need to be extremely careful, for the risk of permanent liver damage is way higher in them. Alcoholic Hepatitis This is a condition that causes the liver to swell, in turn damaging it. The symptoms of alcoholic hepatitis include loss of appetite, vomiting, abdominal pain, fever and jaundice. It is estimated that one out of every three heavy drinkers develops alcoholic hepatitis.Alcoholic hepatitis can either be mild or severe. Mild liver damage can be reversed; all you need is to quit drinking. However, if one continues to consume alcohol despite having mild alcoholic hepatitis, the liver will slowly start becoming dysfunctional. According to reports, more than 50% of patients with severe alcoholic hepatitis do not survive. Alcoholic Cirrhosis Alcoholic cirrhosis is permanent scarring of liver caused due to excess alcohol consumption. A life-threatening condition and the most serious alcohol-related disease, the liver fails to function normally as healthy liver tissue gets replaced with scar tissue. The damage caused to the liver is usually irreversible. Though stopping alcohol consumption may help prevent further damage, related complications are not curable. In addition to the symptoms of alcoholic hepatitis the patient may develop severe bouts of jaundice, vomit blood, suffer from fluid accumulation in the abdomen and feet, get mentally disoriented or worse, slip into coma. Estimates say that almost 20% of heavy drinkersdevelop liver cirrhosis.

Heavy drinkers usually progress from fatty liver to alcoholic hepatitis to alcoholic cirrhosis over time. However, one may develop alcoholic cirrhosis without getting alcoholic hepatitis first. Besides, obesity, diabetes and chronic Hepatitis C infection increase the chance of liver diseases substantially.​

The complications of liver diseases start showing very slowly, over many years. Symptoms usually aggravate with time and become life threating. The patient may suffer from Build-up of fluid in the abdomen (ascites) and legs (edema) Vomiting blood due to rupture of veins in the food pipe or stomach Deliriousness or confusion (Hepatic Encephalopathy) Coma Kidney failure Liver cancer

Your doctor can diagnose whether you have any alcohol-related disease based on your medical history, physical examination, blood tests and radiological investigations such as Ultrasound or CT scan. If required, you may need to undergo a liver biopsy. This will help your doctor to understand the extent of damage caused to your liver. During the biopsy, a small portion of the liver tissue will be removed with the help of a needle and tested in the laboratory. Remember, it is possible that a patient can suffer from multiple liver problems like Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C infection at the same time.

If the liver gets irreparably damaged and cannot be managed medically anymore, your doctor might recommend a liver transplant, depending on your health condition.

The first thing we do is to assess the patient as a team to determine whether transplant is the best way forward. Secondly his or her medical fitness for the transplant is assessed. Our team comprises hepato pancreato biliary/ multi organ transplant surgeons, hepatologists, transplant anaesthesiologists, liver anaesthesiologists, Intensivits, critical care experts, diagnostic radiologists, interventional radiologists, infectious diseases/ infection control physicians, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists supported by transplant coordinators, substance dependency experts to help those with a history of alcohol/drug use and social workers. All medical records are reviewed carefully, and a comprehensive pre-transplant diagnostic and pathological investigations are done to understand the extent of liver damage, ascertain blood, heart and lung health and check for any other major infections or diseases. If everything is acceptable, then we register the patient for liver transplant, according to blood type, body size, medical condition and a priority score based on three simple blood tests known as MELD (model of end-stage liver disease) in adults and PELD (paediatric end-stage liver disease) in children. Patients with the highest scores are transplanted first.