Liver Failure

What Causes Liver Failure?

Liver failure can complicate almost all forms of liver diseases. Though the clinical pictures differ, the overall picture and the treatment remains the same. The typical answers to the question "What causes liver failure" include the following liver problems.

• Cirrhosis
• Fatty liver during pregnancy
• Hepatitis due to drugs
• Viral hepatitis 

Sometimes a clinical sign of liver failure develops in a previously healthy person within 8 weeks from the onset of the first symptom. This rapidly progressing liver failure is called fulminant liver failure.

Unfortunately, life expectancy with liver failure is short. You cannot live without a functioning liver. Once liver failure occurs, the only option for survival is a liver transplant.

Liver failure can be considered more of a functional syndrome than an anatomical one.

There are a number of ways to recognize signs and symptoms of liver failure. Common liver failure symptoms include

• General failure of health like weakness, loss of appetite, wasting etc.
• Jaundice
• Bluish discoloration of the nails
• Fever
• Fetor hepaticus – It is a sweetish slightly fecal smell of breath
• Ascites – collection of fluid in the abdominal cavity
• Changes in the protein metabolism
• Skin changes like spider nevi, redness of the palms, white nails etc
• Endocrine changes – In the male, the changes are towards feminization. The changes include small, soft testes, loss of secondary sexual hair, enlargement of breast, diminished sexual desire and potency. In the females, the changes are less and towards gonadal atrophy
• Defective blood clotting

Liver failure treatment includes two components – treating the cause of liver failure and prevention of the development of neurological damage. The second component is more important. Neurological damage can be prevented by following the below given treatment.

• Identifying the cause and treating it
• Preventing bleeding in the bowel
• Ensuring at least two bowel movements daily – the drug lactulose or lactilol may be useful
• Protein free diet
• The drug neomycin 1 gram four times a day by mouth for one week
• Maintaining adequate caloric intake
• Stopping the use of diuretics

All the above mentioned steps of treatment for liver failure are only temporary measures. 

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