LIFESTYLE RELATED CHRONIC LIVER DISEASE – THE SILENT EPIDEMIC, SAYS DR HARIKUMAR R NAIR

Liver disease is regularly associated with excessive alcohol use, but knowledge of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) is relatively less known. If undiagnosed and untreated, it may ultimately lead to cirrhosis of the liver. June, 2019: Liver diseases are largely silent without causing any signs or symptoms in the patient. The damage which happens at liver tissue level through the stages of fatty liver, fatty hepatitis and liver scarring is silent until very late stage where liver function dips. This entire injury happens over a span of 2 decades or more. Most of the time in countries like India where screening programs are not active, liver cirrhosis is detected at a stage when patient needs liver transplant to survive. This underlines the necessity to undergo screening to detect this silent epidemic and arrest progression into late stages of liver scarring and liver cancer. Once significant liver scarring or liver cirrhosis sets in; reversibility cannot be guaranteed....