When it comes to deadly liver disease, everyone will first think of two words: liver cancer!
Yes, the overall clinical prognosis of liver cancer in mainland China is very unsatisfactory, it is the second largest malignant tumor with the highest mortality rate after lung cancer.
However, in chronic liver disease, there is not only this one fatal disease, in addition to liver cancer, the most terrible is cirrhosis, advanced cirrhosis is even more terrible than cancer!
The so-called cirrhosis of the liver does not refer to the lesions that appear independently on the liver, but the patient has had a variety of diseases before, such as viral hepatitis, alcoholic liver disease, parasitic infections and so on.
Affected by these factors, liver cells continue to rupture and damage, spontaneous repair, resulting in the liver gradually appear scar repair, fibrous tissue hyperplasia, liver gradually lose elasticity, liver pseudolobelet formation, shape change, and eventually the formation of cirrhosis.
Usually, cirrhosis goes through two distinct stages, the compensatory phase and the decompensated phase. Because the liver's compensatory capacity is so strong, patients can show no symptoms in the early stages of cirrhosis, that is, during the compensatory phase.
With the continuous development of cirrhosis, it will enter the decompensation period, and patients may have obvious liver function damage, portal hypertension and other problems.
According to the current clinical data, cirrhosis cannot be reversed, and there is no possibility of cure. Unlike liver cancer, which is confined to a certain part, cirrhosis is a diffuse liver damage, so there is no way to remove it from the treatment of liver cancer. Once cirrhosis develops to an advanced stage, the patient's liver may not only become cancerous, but also be accompanied by multiple complications.
For example, patients may have hepatic encephalopathy, intraperitoneal effusion, gastrointestinal bleeding and other problems. Especially affected by portal hypertension, patients with gastric varices, gastrointestinal mucosal congestion, once the blood vessel rupture, gastrointestinal bleeding will occur.
Moreover, because the coagulation mechanism of patients with cirrhosis is impaired, bleeding is often not easily stopped. If gastrointestinal bleeding develops, after the initial appearance, the patient may die of excessive blood loss.
So far, the treatment of cirrhosis has only two directions, namely etiological treatment and liver transplantation:
1. Treatment of etiology
As mentioned above, cirrhosis is the result of the development of various chronic liver diseases. As long as it can be blocked in time, the liver will not continue to develop fibrous tissue hyperplasia.
It should be known that the liver has a very strong reserve capacity, as long as the overall liver function is maintained at more than 25%, it can maintain the basic needs of the body. Therefore, the so-called etiological treatment is to treat the primary disease in time before the liver function is completely paralyzed;
2, liver transplantation
If the patient does not actively control the primary disease, cirrhosis will further develop and gradually enter the decompensated phase, when the overall liver function is less than 25%.
At this stage, patients are very likely to have complications, so patients should consider the second treatment direction while treating the primary disease, which is called liver transplantation in the clinic. Since the success of the first liver transplant in 1963, many patients have been reborn through liver transplantation.
Finally, I would like to remind everyone that compared with liver cancer, cirrhosis is actually not as terrible as imagined. But when it progresses to the advanced and terminal stages, it may be even more difficult than cancer.
Therefore, for patients who have already developed primary liver disease, they should be actively treated according to the doctor's recommendations, such as improving living habits, taking drugs, actively receiving relevant treatment, etc., so as to avoid the disease from reaching the point of irreparability.