Can you have cirrhosis of the liver SY... - British Liver Trust

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Can you have cirrhosis of the liver SYMPTOMS. With normal blood work?

Chris884•

3 years ago•8 Replies

Can you have cirrhosis SYMPTOMS with all liver blood work in normal range?

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Chris884

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hells4563 years ago

I don't think you can have the advanced symptoms without it showing somewhere in the bloodwork. It can happen that the liver is so damaged near end stage it stops spewing out enzymes, but the platelets, clotting time, bilirubin, kidney function and so on would be very obvious.

Liver disease is known as a silent killer because often there aren't any symptoms and those that we have are often vague and non specific like fatigue and loss of appetite. In liver disease symptoms don't really help diagnosis, it's all on bloodwork, scans or rarely a biopsy.

3 years ago

My husband's blood tests were far from normal and he had loads of horrible symptoms even before diagnosis. Once diagnosed he was given medication for each symptom plus more medication to treat the side effects of those meds. For him it certainly wasn't the silent killer, it was loud and clear.Are you still trying to figure out for yourself whether or not you have liver disease?

TT-20183 years ago

I doubt that and what symptoms are you exactly talking about? I had loads of symptoms, too numerous to go through. But I was the one ‘fobbing’ the doctors off, in case they asked about my drinking. It resulted in an emergency admission to A&E in an ambulance, emergency surgery and a long stay in hospital on several IV drips and a discharge with a suitcase full of medication to deal with the host of symptoms. The only thing that showed no problems was there was no pain in my liver. That felt fine, everything else was falling apart. When my bloods were taken, the results showed that everything pointed towards a transplant.

oxaram3 years ago

What "symptoms" exactly are you talking about? Cirrhosis can produce a whole variety of symptoms many of which are common to a variety of other ailments.

Str8jacket• in reply tooxaram3 years ago

You make a great point. The answer to the original question must be "yes/it depends." Aside from jaundice and ascites, I would think it is possible to have many, if not almost all, cirrhosis symptoms with normalish bloods.

There was a Lancet study from a few years back which found that relying only on liver function tests to find advanced liver disease would miss half of all cases. My HE showed up and my LFTs were generally normal, though several other measures were off. And before folks hit end stage cirrhosis, they may have had cirrhosis for many years with all sorts of more minor symptoms.

But as you point out, the original question is a bit vague if not impossible to answer specifically.

What gets me on this forum is the number of commenters (including folks with experience, who should know better) who write things like "When I found out I/(my loved one) had cirrhosis, I/(he/she) was vomiting blood. You aren't, so you can't have cirrhosis." It's like some folks still don't appreciate the basic difference between compensated and decompensated cirrhosis, or the importance of catching liver disease early. And those kinds of comments just keep other people misinformed about liver disease. Ah well.

TT-2018• in reply toStr8jacket3 years ago

Well, thank goodness that you have arrived on the forum with your fibroscan score of 6.1, requiring end of life care! The rest of the people here who share their lived experiences of suffering from liver disease or caring for someone are passing on advice that is clearly wrong and they “should know better”.

3 years ago

Which guy do you mean chris ?

3 years ago

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