What are the Early Signs and Treatment of Liver Disease?

The liver is one of those organs that one feels the importance of, only when it becomes hampered by illnesses and its functioning quality deteriorates. One of the most damaging diseases to the liver is the disease of cirrhosis. Liver failure diagnosis during severely damaged stages of the liver is often the diagnosis of cirrhosis. This is because cirrhosis is a liver disease of the late-stage kind. 

What is cirrhosis? 

Cirrhosis of the liver is the condition in which healthy liver tissue finds itself getting replaced with scar tissue. This results in permanent damage to the liver. The occurrence of scar tissue stops your liver from working as it should. Life-threatening is late-stage cirrhosis. 

Cirrhosis symptoms

As is the case with any disease, it is important to watch out for the symptoms that indicate the onset of the disease. Should you find yourself experiencing the following, liver failure treatment is mandatory. Early symptoms that cirrhosis can express can be:

• Appetite loss
• Weakness and lethargy
• Nausea
• Fever
• A rapid, unexpected loss of weight

The best Liver hospital should be able to control the damage of cirrhosis at this stage itself, but in case you do not take the step to get cirrhosis treated, the disease can get significantly more damaging. In the event of you not recognizing these symptoms, more obvious cirrhosis symptoms will begin to appear, and they can include:

• Easy bruising
• Easy bleeding
• Yellow tint to the skin
• Yellow shade to the eyes
• Edema (swelling in the legs, feet, ankles, etc)
• Ascites (buildup of fluid in the belly and abdominal region)
• Brown to orange colored urine
• Pale stool expulsion
• Brain fog with difficulty in thinking, loss of memory
• Changes to the personality 
• Reddening of the palms
• Telangiectasias (spider-like blood vessels on the skin)
• Loss of sex drive, shrinkage of testicles
• Gynecomastia in men
• Premature menopause

Is everyone at risk (of getting cirrhosis)?

No. But certain people are more at risk of being affected by cirrhosis. You are more at risk if you:

• Are an alcoholic
• Affected by viral hepatitis
• Have diabetes
• Have obesity 
• Share needles to inject drugs
• Have a liver disease history
• Have unsafe sex

Is cirrhosis a form of cancer?

No cirrhosis is not any kind of cancer.  With that said, however, if someone has liver cancer, then they are highly likely to have cirrhosis, too. Conversely, if you already have cirrhosis, you are more at risk of liver cancer. Any liver disease you have can lead to you having cirrhosis as a result. 

Is cirrhosis reversible? 

If treatment for cirrhosis is taken early, it can be managed with relative ease and can be slowed down with its progression being stopped. In any other case, cirrhosis isn’t a reversible medical condition.

Do you require cirrhosis in a hereditary way?

While cirrhosis by itself isn’t passed from parents to children (hereditary), there are diseases that can cause the damage of liver that can lead directly to cirrhosis, which is hereditary in their nature. 

Is cirrhosis a fatal disease?

Cirrhosis being diagnosed doesn’t mean that you are at immediate risk of fatality. However, if the cirrhosis condition continues unabated, scarring is an inevitability, and scarring can lead to more and more declining of your liver’s functioning. In time, the failing liver may end up becoming life-threatening. However, the best liver hospital in Coimbatore should still be able to successfully stall death, and help you live a better life if you are a candidate for a liver transplant. 

Steps to prevent the worsening of cirrhosis 

Since cirrhosis causes permanent damage to the liver, it is prudent to know the steps to prevent the worsening of cirrhosis disease. Some of the steps are: 

• Avoiding alcohol
• Treating chronic hepatitis 
• Avoiding medications that cause stress to the liver
• Consuming a healthy, balanced, low-fat diet