Alcoholic Liver Disease: Causes, Symptoms & Recovery Support

Is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine NYCPM (Emerite) and a medical practitioner in New York State. He has published many peer-review papers in medicine and he is a best-selling author with more than twenty books in national and international distribution. Dr. Holt is a frequent lecturer at scientific meetings and healthcare facilities throughout the world. He is a best selling author and the founder of the Holt Institute of Medicine. This information is for educational purposes only and should not be used in any other manner.

Treatment

Psychologists and psychiatrists must be asked by clinicians to assess the psychological state of patients to determine the origin of alcohol intoxication (depression, post-traumatic shock). The liver is responsible for metabolizing or processing ethanol, the main component of alcohol. Over time, the liver of a person who drinks heavily can become damaged and cause alcoholic liver disease. Alcoholic hepatitis most often happens in people who drink heavily over many years. Your prognosis (outlook) will depend on the stage of your liver disease and whether you stop drinking alcohol.

Acute Liver Failure

Cirrhosis is a stage of ARLD where the liver has become significantly scarred. Alcoholic hepatitis can be confused with other causes of hepatitis, such as viral, drug-induced, or autoimmune hepatitis. Clinical context and serum tests are fundamental to distinguish these entities. Eating a healthy diet, getting regular exercise, and avoiding liver-damaging foods such as fried foods, can also help the liver heal during treatment. Many people with ALD are malnourished (lacking proper nutrition) due to a variety of factors, such as lack of eating, vomiting, and malabsorption (difficulty absorbing nutrients from food).

Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

• You’ll only be considered for a liver transplant if you have developed complications of cirrhosis despite having stopped drinking.
• They can help correct nutritional deficiencies that can cause complications such as weakness, shaking, loss of sensation and strength, anemia, and Wernicke encephalopathy.
• Excessive alcohol consumption can cause fat to build up in your liver.
• Liver transplantation, a definitive treatment option in patients with advanced alcoholic cirrhosis, may also be considered in selected patients with AH cases, who do not respond to medical therapy.

Cerebral damage, malnutrition, and infections among patients with alcohol-related cirrhosis and continued alcohol use may lower the threshold in development of hepatic encephalopathy. However, other causes of altered mental status should be screened for, especially among patients who present with atypical neuro-psychiatric features that warrant questioning the diagnosis of hepatic encephalopathy or AWS. A drug screen is recommended and in selected patients imaging of the head and cerebral spinal fluid studies may be required (53). Between 10% and 20% of people with alcoholic hepatitis will progress to cirrhosis.

Liver transplantation for alcoholic cirrhosis

Steatosis can progress to steatohepatitis, which is a more severe, inflammatory type of liver injury. This stage of liver disease can lead to the development of fibrosis, during alcoholic liver disease which there is excessive deposition of extracellular matrix proteins. The fibrotic response begins with active pericellular fibrosis, which may progress to cirrhosis, characterized by excessive liver scarring, vascular alterations, and eventual liver failure.

Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (steatosis)

Once you have cirrhosis, your life expectancy is generally two to 15 years from diagnosis. The most important part of treating alcohol-related fatty liver disease is to stop drinking alcohol. If you need help doing that, you may want to see a therapist or participate in an alcohol recovery program. There are also medicines Alcohol Use Disorder that can help, either by reducing your cravings or making you feel sick if you drink alcohol. You will likely have blood tests, including liver function tests and blood count tests.

• If excessive alcohol consumption continues, inflammation levels can begin to increase in the liver.
• Between 10% and 20% of people with alcoholic hepatitis will progress to cirrhosis.
• Cirrhosis is considered end stage liver disease as it cannot be reversed and can lead to liver failure.
• Moderate alcohol consumption for men means that no more than two alcoholic beverages are consumed each day.

Clinical Presentation

Among problem drinkers, about 35 percent develop advanced liver disease because a number of disease modifiers exacerbate, slow, or prevent alcoholic liver disease progression. There are still no FDA-approved pharmacological or nutritional therapies for treating patients with alcoholic liver disease. Cessation of drinking (i.e., abstinence) is an integral part of therapy.