My watch list
my.bionity.com  
Login  

Liver failure



Liver failure
Classification & external resources
ICD-10 K72.9
DiseasesDB 5728
eMedicine med/990 
MeSH D017093

Liver failure is the inability of the liver to perform its normal synthetic and metabolic function as part of normal physiology. Two forms are recognised:[1]

  • Acute liver failure - development of hepatic encephalopathy (confusion, stupor and coma) and decreased production of proteins (such as albumin and blood clotting proteins) within four weeks of the first symptoms (such as jaundice) of a liver problem. "Hyperacute" liver failure is said to be present if this interval is 7 days or less, while "subacute" liver failure is said to be present if the interval is 5-12 weeks.
  • Chronic liver failure usually occurs in the context of cirrhosis, itself potentially the result of many possible causes, such as excessive alcohol intake, hepatitis B or C, autoimmune, hereditary and metabolic causes.

References

  1. ^ O'Grady JG, Schalm SW, Williams R. Acute liver failure: redefining the syndromes. Lancet 1993;342:273-5. PMID 8101303.
 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Liver_failure". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.
Your browser is not current. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 does not support some functions on Chemie.DE