A FOLLOW-UP STUDY ON THE LIVER OF ALCOHOLICS

Serial liver biopsies were performed on 62 alcoholics to clarify the course of development of cirrhosis. Twenty-five of them were abstained. Histological improvements were confirmed by the follow-up biopsies of these 25 patients. The remaining 37 patients continued drinking and recieved serial biopsies at the intervals of more than a year. Eighteen patients of them revealed cirrhosis at the first biopsy. In these cirrhotic patients, the septa tend to be widened histologically. Out of these 19 patients with non-cirrhotic changes, 11 progressed to cirrhosis 1 to 7 years after the first biopsy. The first biopsy specimens taken from these 11 patients, showed porto-central bridging fibrosis in 8 patients (72.7%) and disclosed pericellular fibrosis in 6 patients (54.5%), respectively. In 9 out of these 11 patients, alcoholic hepatitis was histologically observed in the course of development of cirrhosis. It was suggested that alcoholic hepatitis plays an important role in the development of cirrhosis. It appeared that alcoholics whose liver specimens showed porto-central bridging fibrosis had a tendency to progress to cirrhosis after continued drinking.