Liver Care

Each of the components of your hepatobiliary system has important roles in your body:

Liver

Your liver performs many tasks:

• Neutralizes toxins or poisons, such as alcohol or drugs.
• Produces bile, which allows your body to digest and absorb proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, and eliminate cholesterol.
• Produces blood proteins and more than 1,000 enzymes (proteins that cause chemical reactions in our bodies).
• Produces substances that help your blood clot.
• Purifies and metabolizes (changes into energy and nutrients) various medications.
• Regulates certain hormones and helps maintain blood sugar levels.
• Removes bacteria that you might have unknowingly eaten or absorbed.
• Stockpiles energy to fuel your muscles.
• Uses and stores vitamins and minerals.

Gallbladder

Your gallbladder stores bile until it’s released into your small intestine after you eat.

Bile Duct

Your bile duct provides a passageway for bile between your liver, gallbladder, and small intestine.

Our team offers comprehensive digestive diagnostic services. These include:

• Imaging studies
• Lab tests
• Liver biopsy

Noninvasive Testing for Liver Fibrosis

Liver fibrosis, or scarring, is what usually leads to cirrhosis and other serious liver conditions. Traditionally, a fibrosis diagnosis has required a biopsy. A doctor would remove a small piece of your liver tissue with a needle or through surgery.

The Liver Center offers a noninvasive diagnostic test. Ultrasound or MRI elastography can reveal fibrosis and fatty deposits in your liver. With this test, if doctors find scarring, they can quickly determine whether you’re at risk for progression to cirrhosis. This noninvasive liver test is quick and easy and similar to ultrasound.

Our team at BIDMC can work with your primary care doctor to schedule this test. You should receive your results within the same week.

Liver and hepatobiliary disease can be challenging. We provide a full range of treatments and services to help you as you move forward. These include:

• Medication
• Nutrition and dietary counseling

Minimally Invasive Procedures & Surgery

In many cases, we can treat liver, gallbladder, and bile duct conditions endoscopically with minimally invasive procedures and surgeries. These treatments allow us to address problems without large incisions and long hospital stays. If you’re in the end stages of liver failure, our team is well-known for providing the highest quality transplant care. You can also receive a living donor liver transplant at BIDMC.

• Endoscopy
• Interventional Radiology
• Hepatobiliary Surgery
• Liver Transplant

You may wish to consider liver transplant if you have advanced liver disease and worsening liver function. It may also be an option if you’re unable to benefit from other medical or surgical treatments.

As our patient, you directly benefit from research conducted here at BIDMC. When you first meet with your liver doctor, they may ask if you’re interested in taking part in one of our clinical research trials.

There are advantages to joining a study. First, it offers you access to the latest breakthrough treatments. Often, you can’t get them elsewhere. Taking part in clinical trials also gives you a chance to be part of the discovery process. Our scientists actively work to better understand the causes of certain liver diseases. They also attempt to find new ways to diagnose and treat these conditions. You can be a part of that.

Whether or not to participate is strictly up to you. Even if you don’t take part in a clinical research trial, you can be confident your treatment plan at the Liver Center will include the most up-to-date and effective methods. Many of the current FDA-approved diagnostics and treatments for liver disease have been developed through partnerships with physicians at BIDMC.