Liver Fibrosis

We have known for a long time that liver is able to grow back after it has been injured. For example, if you donate 2/3s of a normal liver for transplant, most of it grows back after a few weeks.


In most chronic liver diseases, injury is slow so the liver can repair itself by growing back. Over many years of ongoing injury, liver repair may not keep up with liver damage. Scar tissue may slowly replace liver cells and distort the liver. The normal liver is like a well-planned city where there are many stores that you can reach by roads. When there is a lot of scar tissue, the blood channels (sinusoids) in the liver get narrower and may close up. There may be so much loss of liver cells that the liver cannot do what it is supposed to do. This is like losing most of the stores (liver cells) and cluttering up the streets (sinusoids) of the city. When the liver is very badly scarred, we call this cirrhosis.