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Tushar Patel: Well Pam, you’re situation is not unusual. Many patients have quite significant and advanced level of disease but may not have any symptoms due to it and by the time they are diagnosed, they tend to have very late and stale level of disease.
Typically, with an individual who has advanced level disease and extensive evaluation will identify whether liver transplantation would be appropriate. If it’s felt that a liver transplant is necessary and appropriate to prolong life then the patient will be put on a waiting list. Unfortunately, many patients die while on the waiting list because of a nationwide shortage of organ donors and one of the most important things that we would encourage is to encourage everybody to become organ donors.
Having a transplant is essentially replacing one disease condition with another. While you would correct the liver disease, you now have to face the consequences of taking medications for the rest of your life. It is very important that a person who has received an organ transplant continue to take ominous suppressive medications. These are medicines to prevent the body from rejecting the donor organ which is looked on by the body as being a foreign object.
These medicines have a lot of side effects and their consequence of taking them may be increased infections. The consequence of not taking them might be a rejection with the loss of the organ. At this time, there are probably, about 20 individuals who die everyday while on the waiting list in the United States and one of the most important things that we would encourage is to encourage everybody to become organ donors because it truly is a gift of life.
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