Mga Pahina

FATTY LIVER DISEASE

Some fat in your liver is normal. But if it makes up more than 5%-10% of the organ's weight, you may have fatty liver disease. If you're a drinker, stop. That's one of the key causes of the condition.

There are two main types of fatty liver disease:

Alcoholic liver disease (ALD)
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)

You can also get fatty liver disease during pregnancy.

A Visual Guide to Hepatitis

Alcoholic Liver Disease (ALD)
You can get alcoholic liver disease from drinking lots of alcohol. It can even show up after a short period of heavy drinking.

Genes that are passed down from your parents may also play a role in ALD. They can affect the chances that you become an alcoholic. And they can also have an impact on the way your body breaks down the alcohol you drink.

SIGNS OF AUTISM

Many parents whose children exhibit speech and language delays are immediately concerned that their child may have autism. In early intervention, we cannot diagnose a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), we can only tell a parent if their child is showing developmental delays and if we see certain red flags that may indicate a child needs further evaluation to rule out ASD.

As an independent evaluator, I have seen many children for “speech only” evaluations (where speech is the only area of concern for the family) who exhibited red flags for autism. Many of the red flags were not related to speech. Conversely, I have seen many children whose parents ask me if their child may have autism (due to delayed speech) and it’s pretty clear to me that they don’t, they simply have a developmental delay in speech.

As a therapist, it’s again important to distinguish that I cannot make a diagnosis of autism. This needs to be done by a licensed professional, such as a child psychologist, psychiatrist or developmental pediatrician. So what are the red flags that I am seeing that some parents miss? Many times it’s their social skills and play skills! Or lack of these skills.

ANATOMICAL ABNORMALITIES OF THE LIVER

These are being increasingly diagnosed with more widespread use of CT and ultrasound scanning.
Accessory lobes. The livers of the pig, dog and camel are divided into distinct and separate lobes by strands of connective tissue. Occasionally, the human liver may show this reversion and up to 16 lobes have been reported. This abnormality is rare and without clinical significance. The lobes are small and usually on the undersurface of the liver so that they are not detected clinically but are noted incidentally at scanning, operation or necropsy. Rarely they are intrathoracic. An accessory lobe may have its own mesentery containing hepatic artery, portal vein, bile duct and hepatic vein.

This may twist and demand surgical intervention. Ectopic liver. Small nodules of normal liver derived from the embryologic hepatic bud may be found in less than 1% of laparoscopies and autopsies near the gallbladder, hepatic ligaments, gastrorenal ligament, omentum, retroperitorneum
and thorax. These may give rise to hepatocellular carcinoma.

Riedel’s lobe. This is fairly common and is a downward tongue - like projection of the right lobe of the liver.

ANATOMY OF THE LIVER

• The liver is derived from a foregut endodermal bud which develops in the third week of gestation and divides into two parts: hepatic and biliary.
• The Couinaud classifi cation subdivides the liver into eight segments (segments I – IV in the left lobe, segments V – VIII in the right lobe) based on vascular and biliary anatomical landmarks.
• The lobule described by Kiernan is the most widely used unit of liver microanatomy, consisting of a hexagon - like region of liver parenchyma with a central vein as its hub and portal tracts located in the periphery of the hexagon.
• Hepatocytes are functionally heterogeneous within the lobular parenchyma, whereby centrilobular cells subserve different functions (e.g. drug metabolism) from periportal cells (e.g. bile salt - dependent bile formation).
• Uncomplicated regeneration of hepatocytes and/or bile duct epithelium usually occurs by cell division of the indigenous cells; however, when normal regenerative capacity is overwhelmed there may be activation of progenitors cells located in the region of the canals of Hering.

The liver, the largest organ in the body, weighs 1200 – 1500 g and comprises one - fi ftieth of the total adult body weight. It is relatively larger in infancy, comprising one - eighteenth of the birth weight. This is mainly due to a large left lobe.