Case Study on Liver Cirrhosis

Running head:CASE STUDY ON LIVER CIRRHOSIS
CASE STUDY ON LIVER CIRRHOSIS
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1CASE STUDY ON LIVER CIRRHOSIS
Answer: 1
Liver cirrhosis causes scarring of liver. It is caused by different forms of liver or
hepatic anomalies. Chronic alcohol consumption and hepatitis can cause liver cirrhosis. If the
liver is abused due to any past diseases like hepatitis or excessive alcohol consumption the
scar tissues form to repair the damage (Tsochatzis, Bosch & Burroughs, 2014). The
disproportionate formation of scar tissues makes it difficult for the liver to function and can
become life threatening.
Causes:
 Excessive consumption of alcohol
 Viral hepatitis B,C and D (Wiest, Lawson & Geuking, 2014).
 Hemochromatosis or iron accumulation in the body.
 Cystic fibrosis.
 Accumulation of excess fat in the liver.
 Wilson’s disease due to copper accumulation in the liver.
 Biliary atresia.
 Glycogen storage or Galactosemia disease.
 Digestive disorder Alagille syndrome.
 Deficiency of Alpha-1 antitrypsin.
 Biliary cirrhosis.
 Autoimmune hepatitis disease.
 Syphilis infection.
 Scarring and toughening of the bile ducts which are called as sclerosing cholangitis
(Zhou, Zhang &Qiao, 2014).

2CASE STUDY ON LIVER CIRRHOSIS
The main cause of liver cirrhosis by Mr. Nathan James is hepatitis C-infection before 10
years. Wiest, Lawson and Geuking (2014) stated that chronic hepatitis C infection increases
the vulnerability of developing hepatitis c via damaging the hepatic cells and promoting the
occurrence of the progressive liver injury. This damage of the liver cells and progressive liver
injury promotes the development of the liver cirrhosis during the later part of life, after 10 to
20 years. Another reason which has increased the vulnerability of developing liver cirrhosis
in Mr. James is his addiction towards alcohol. As per the case study, Mr. James used of
consume 2 cans of beer per day. Since the liver of Mr. James is already damage due to the
previous infection history of hepatitis C, further charring of the liver cells by alchol made the
disease development an indispensible case (Tsochatzis, Bosch & Burroughs, 2014). However,
from the case study it is still not clear that whether Mr. Jams is suffering from alcoholic on
non-alcoholic liver disease.
Incidence:
The estimation of liver cirrhosis is about 14 people out of 100000. Common aetiology
of liver cirrhosis is excessive alcohol consumption which is 58% of total incidents of liver
cirrhosis. Hepatitis C is the reason of 13% while 12% is caused by cryptogenic cirrhosis.
Ascites is diagnosed in 43% of the cases while encephalopathy and variceal bleeding is seen
in 4% and 6% of the cases respectively. 1 year survival rate is 79%, 5 years of survival rate is
47% while 10 years of survival rate is 27% (Mokdad et al., 2014). Women have better
survival rate than men.
Risk factors:
 Overconsumption of alcohol is a risk factor for cirrhosis.
 Being obese may lead to liver cirrhosis like and such cirrhosis can be driven
by non-alcoholic or alcoholic liver disease