Symptoms of Hepatic Dysfunction

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Dr. Peter Kramer from Wrightsville Beach Family Medicine in Wilmington, North Carolina. The question today is what are some of the symptoms of hepatic dysfunction. Unfortunately the most common symptom of hepatic dysfunction can be no symptom at all. Many people will have elevated liver enzymes which can mean that the liver may not be functioning it's full capacity and that, they may have no symptoms at all. Often times in our office we will find random elevations of liver enzymes. And the patient will not have any known cause why. Usually we are able to isolate a cause, we look at medications, we look at alcohol use, we look at cholesterol issues, things like that. And we try to define a purpose or a reason why the liver function is elevated. The liver has a couple of important functions, one of it is synthetic. It makes clotting factors and it also clears bilirubin which comes from broken down red blood cells. If you have a problem with your liver function and it's not doing it's synthetic function like it should you may have trouble making clotting factors. You find that you bruise very easily and it's not your typical, oh I got a bruise, it's, the bruise can be very substantial. A minor amount of trauma causes a large bruise. You may find bleeding from your gums, you might find extra heavy menstrual periods if you are a menstruating female. And other problems with liver functions if your liver isn't functioning well you can have protein problems. You can have swelling in your legs and all kinds of other problems if your synthetic function of your liver isn't working right. We often find those with just a basic easily done liver function test that's done in a Dr's office. If you have any of those symptoms or problems please contact your doctor's office right away. That's a little bit about hepatic dysfunction."