Diagrams of where my liver was damaged and repaired
I meant to post this a month ago … but the images just sat on my desktop. Well time for a cleanup! OK. so I had a transjugular liver biopsy and they took the sample in an unfortunate area which basically short-circuited the circulation in my liver … connecting the input directly to the output. This resulted in sporadic and sometimes massive blood loss. It’s a very rare complication, but obviously it does happen. Most doctors don’t even consider it a possibility because it’s so rare, and are convinced that the bleeding must be from elsewhere (despite the patients insistence!). Many Many endoscopies are required to convince them that the bleed is not in the stomach, intestine, or colon where it is more commonly (i.e. varacies). The bleeding actually occurs in the liver and drains into the colon through the common bile duct, as depicted in the above diagram.
In my case, the bleed was somewhere between the transjugular vein where they went in (I think they call it a hepatic vein in the liver, with some special name) and the hepatic artery. In the diagram below, it’s shown more clearly. Keep in mind that this is a diagram! So it’s not as simple as it’s shown, the veins and arteries actually branch out in all directions making a connection easier and harder to avoid (I guess!).
Click here for original, expanded diagram.
So ya, ouch. But it was patched up by embolising part of the liver. Making a clot form in a branch of a branch off the hepatic artery. Feels weird having a junk of useless stuff in the liver, but at least not bleeding anymore. I had to do a lot of research and digging to understand just what happened, and then to find diagrams to show it. The liver is an incredibly complex organ! Even when you zoom in and look closer, the same structure exists but on a much finer scale. As shown here in a diagrammatic liver lobule
and real image here.
June 26th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
[...] the sample in an unfortunate area which basically short-circuited the circulation in my liver ??http://www.peacekeeper.biz/blog/2008/05/18/diagrams-of-where-my-liver-was-damaged-and-repaired/Evaluation of the hepatic artery in potential donors for living …Computed tomography angiography [...]