What are Common Liver Diseases Requiring Transplant?
The liver is your largest internal organ located in the upper right portion of your stomach. It is a vital organ essential for digestion and flushing out toxins from your body. You should know about common liver diseases so you can prevent your liver from problems and keep it healthy.
Hepatitis B/C: It is a viral infection that can damage the liver to the point where a transplant becomes the only solution. But the damage to the liver could be reduced by taking quick action.
Biliary Artesia: It is a malfunction of the bile duct. The liver sends bile to the gall bladder or intestine through the bile duct. But a malfunction could lead to bile deposit in the liver and lead to liver failure in the long run.
Wilson’s Disease: Deposit of copper in the body could lead to liver failure due to copper deposit.
Primary Biliary Cirrhosis: The problem starts from within the body. It happens when the immune system attacks the bile ducts. The immune system takes the bile ducts as foreign elements instead of native parts and attacks them.
Liver Cirrhosis: It is a life-threatening disease because it is irreversible. The treatment available for the problem is a transplant. The damaged part has to be replaced with a new and healthy part. It happens when the liver sustains a problem for a long time.
For example, take Hepatitis B/C, excess copper, iron, and drugs in the liver. Sometimes the cause of the problem lies within the liver. It is called progressive scarring where the liver keeps replacing the normal cells with scar tissues. But the problem can be solved, if the disease can be checked in the initial stage.
Another problem with liver cirrhosis is that the disease can affect surrounding organs including kidneys and lungs. It is for this reason that a patient undergoing a transplant has to get all his medical exams done to ascertain the real cause of the liver problem and determine his fitness for the transplant.
Sclerosing Cholangitis: The problem involves the narrowing of bile ducts present in and outside of the liver. Also, the bile ducts get scarred.
Acute Liver Failure: It is a rapid deterioration of the liver due to acute infection with hepatitis A/E or an overdose of acetaminophen. The liver is damaged completely requiring a transplant.
Liver Cancer: It is also one of the common liver diseases. It involves the development of cancerous cells in the liver. It is an end-stage disease that can be cured only with a transplant.
