"The $35 billion race to cure a silent killer that affects 30 million Americans" -Lori Ioannou
For many, a liver transplant is their last hope, after being diagnosed with a deadly disease sweeping the nation at epic proportions. People crowd the unit and undergo scores of testing and evaluation in an effort to get on the hospital's coveted transplant list. It's a program with a 94 percent survival rate after liver transplant, one of the highest in the nation. For many the culprit is a serious form of fatty liver disease called nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, also known as NASH. The effects of the disease — which include fibrosis, ascites (fluid accumulation in the abdomen), bleeding varices in the esophagus and liver cancer — are devastating. What is even scarier is the fact that liver specialists are seeing patients that are younger and younger with this disease due the rising obesity rates. "Today we are seeing people in their 20s and 30s with NASH," says Dr. Leona Kim-Schluger, a hepatologist and professor at the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. "There is even NASH in the pediatric population."
— Hyung Leona Kim-Schluger, MD, Associate Director, The Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute, Sydney J. Zweig Professor of Medicine, Liver Diseases, The Mount Sinai Hospital
Additional coverage: MSN News