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Alcohol Unrelated Hepato‐Biliary Disorders in the Alcoholic: The Role of Liver Biopsy in Determining the Aetiology of Liver Disease
Author(s) -
Whelan G.,
Peters M.,
Desmond P. V.,
Bhathal P. S.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.596
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1445-5994
pISSN - 0004-8291
DOI - 10.1111/j.1445-5994.1982.tb02422.x
Subject(s) - medicine , alcoholic liver disease , liver biopsy , alcoholic hepatitis , gastroenterology , liver disease , liver function tests , cholestasis , primary biliary cirrhosis , population , biopsy , etiology , hepatitis , pathology , cirrhosis , environmental health
Alcohol unrelated hepato‐biliary disorders in the alcoholic: the role of liver biopsy in determining the aetiology of liver disease. G. Whelan, M. Peters, P. V. Desmond and P. S. Bhathal, Aust. N.Z. J. Med., 1982, 12, pp. 34–38. Alcoholics with abnormal liver function tests are generally assumed to have one of the recognised patterns of alcoholic liver injury. This report described a group of nine patients who were initially thought to have alcoholic liver disease but were found on liver biopsy to have a variety of liver disorders unrelated to alcohol. Liver biopsy showed granulomatous hepatitis in three, primary biliary cirrhosis in two, and cholestasis of unknown cause, large duct biliary obstruction, haemochromatosis with secondary carcinoma and Budd‐Chiari syndrome in one each. The histological changes observed in liver biopsy samples are believed to represent a chance occurrence of liver disease due to some agent other than alcohol and illustrates that forms of hepatic disease that affect the population at large can and do occur in heavy alcohol consumers.