Somebody gets a CT scan for an unrelated purpose (orthopedic surgical planning), and, as an incidental finding, they’re told they have liver cirrhosis and need to see other doctors about it.
Would this be a typical finding early in the progression of cirrhosis, or does this suggest the cirrhosis is advanced?
FWIW in other reading I’ve gathered that morphological changes to the liver are part of advanced disease, and I’m making an assumption here that a CT scan isn’t going to detect anything except morphological changes. I further gather that liver parameters in blood work, and perhaps a biopsy, are much better tools for characterizing cirrhosis. I’m just trying to get a feel for what’s going on here. I’m not the patient and don’t have access to all the information the patient has.
I don’t know exactly what the follow up would be but you have the general idea, there’s an indication of cirrhosis that needs further analysis. A CT scan (or maybe it was an NMR, don’t recall after all the scans I’ve had) showed a spot on my pancreas. After much fretting I followed up to find out it was probably not the big potential problem and only a common type of benign cyst.
Morphologic severity of cirrhosis varies; it’s not all or nothing. Someone might be early on in terms of fibrosis and regenerative nodule formation.
There are basically two clinical stages of cirrhosis. The compensated form may be asymptomatic, with liver function parameters that are near normal or at least not too far out of whack. In the decompensated form, you’re prone to complications like portal hypertension, bleeding esophageal varices etc.