Dr. Stephen R. Severance, M.D.

Liver disease is the most common cause, but not the only cause of yellow skin. It is very important to check your eyes, since if it is due to liver disease the whites of your eyes should by yellow tainted as well. If the eyes are not yellow one common cause is ingestion of large quantities of carrots. The bottom line is that if any doubt a fairlin inexpensive lab test done on almost all annual physicals can give a final answer to your question. If you have no insurance Quest labs has a discounted rate for cash patients, and a very inexpensive resource is Life Extension found at lifeextension.com. Your need either a Bilirubin test or sometimes a "panel" of sever al test called Chem 14 or chem12 gives you several tests for same price. By the way, if you are a heavy drinker, I would not wait to have this looked into.,

Any patient with cirrhosis of any cause is at increased risk for hepatocellular cancer/liver cancer, to the degree that the standard of care of cirrhotic patients includes an ultrasound of the abomen, and (optionally) a blood test every six months, which allows the detection of cancer at an early enough stage in most cases to significantly improve chances of cure, or at least noncurative but meanignfull treatment. Certain causes of cirrhosis, including hepatitis B and C, active alcohol consumption, fatty liver from the Western diet can increase further the risk of cancer in cirrhotics, and conversely significant changes in diet and lifestyle and possibly certain supplements---notably including coffee, can lessen but not eliminate the chances of cancer in cirrhotic patients.

Impossible to answer your question specifically without knowing which of the many kinds of "liver diseas" you have, but I can offer some reassurance by saying the that majority of "liver diseases" have a specific treatment (although for the two most common---alcohol and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease---the best treatments involve change in lifestyle---i.e. abstinence from alcohol or very significant change in diet respectively. A few diseases have no good treatment, but are rare, and any liver disease that progresses to cirrhosis can be "cured" by a liver transplant. A more specific answer could be crafted if a more specific diagnosis were available.

By far your best answer to this question is to log into unos.org the web-site for the united organ supply which actually "regulates" the distribution of organs in the fairest way possible. THe most important variable determining wait for transplant is the "MELD" (Mayo clinic End stage Liver Disease) Score which is a complicated calculation best done "digitally" involving 3 or 4 specific blood tests. However, other less importan variables influencing time to transplant include your blood type (strangely a rare type is better!), the cause of your liver disease, certain less common complications of liver disease, and, most unfairly still, what region of the country you might live in. Answering more specific than this would require more information beginning with the diagnosis leading to the need for a new liver

Alcohol was considered the primary cause of f atty liver, until several decades ago when Mayo clinic reported that the toxic western diet could cause fatty liver. Indeed they called this condition NonAlcoholicFattyLiverDisease (NAFLD). The good news is that this condition, in absence of concomitant alcohol consumption, can be arrested and often "cured" by proper nutrition, which only a small minority in Western countries are getting. The bad news is that only a teeny fraction of the 30% of Americans afflicted with this disorder seem able to do, consistent with the growing evidence that there is an addictive process at the core of the current "obesity pandemic" and all it's nast associated illnesses---diabetes or pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, trouble with cholesterol, etc.---not to mention an increase risk of at least 15 different types of cancer. A number of medications for this condition are in clinical trials, but none so far are expected to obviate the need for radical change in nutrition

Impossible to answer your question specifically without knowing waht your MD means by "not functioning" (this is not a billable diagnosis!) and if it truly is functioning poorly in a measurable way, which of the many kinds of "liver diseas" is causing this, but I can offer some reassurance by saying the that majority of "liver diseases" have a specific treatment (although for the two most common---alcohol and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease---the best treatments involve change in lifestyle---i.e. abstinence from alcohol or very significant change in diet respectively. A few diseases have no good treatment, but are rare, and any liver disease that progresses to cirrhosis can be "cured" by a liver transplant. A more specific answer could be crafted if a more specific diagnosis were available.