The Mid South Liver Alliance is holding its Liver Patient Summit, a free public event, in Gonzales Saturday (Sept. 12) to help patients and caregivers understand more about liver health.
The event will be at First United Methodist Church at 224 West Constitution Street from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Held in partnership with Ochsner Transplant Institute, it will feature talks on liver function, living donor transplants, and updates on liver cancer. Other topics include caregiver support, updates on chronic liver disease, liver donation information, and a transplant journey panel featuring team members and patients who share their experiences and answer questions.
The Alliance covers Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky. WRKF's Brooke Thorington sat down with Teresa Davidson, the Alliance’s executive director, to discuss the prevalence of liver disease in the South.
The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
BROOKE THORINGTON, BYLINE: I'm talking with Mid South Liver Alliance Executive Director Teresa Davidson. Tell us why you started the alliance.
TERESA DAVIDSON: It's important to make sure that patients are educated and understand what's going on with liver disease. There's a shortage of hepatologists in our six states. So there was a lot of stuff that needed to be done to get the education and awareness built.
THORINGTON: What function does the liver serve in the body?
DAVIDSON: The liver filters your blood. All the blood that's in your body goes through the liver and goes back up to the heart. It's very important to understand that, and to know that, the liver, being the biggest organ that you have, you want to take care of it as much as possible.
THORINGTON: What are the different types of liver disease?
DAVIDSON: Well, there's hepatitis A, B, C and D, and then there's also Wilson's Disease. There's Primary Biliary Cholangitis (PBC). There's Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC). There are several different autoimmune diseases out there that are associated with the liver.
THORINGTON: Let's talk about fatty liver disease. What is it and how does that also affect the liver?
DAVIDSON: Fatty liver disease has been around for a while. It is now called MASLD, which is Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease. Basically, it's when you eat a lot of fat with sugars and other sodium, things like that, that will make fat appear on the liver, and the liver starts growing fat all the way across it.
It can become what's known as MASH, which is Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatohepatitis. When that happens, your liver starts scarring and gets fibrosis in it, and then the fibrosis can become cirrhotic.
So that's a way that you can get cirrhosis of the liver. Alcohol is what everybody always thinks about when they think about liver disease. Alcohol has a lot of sugar.
THORINGTON: Fatty liver disease is something that most people would think older people get, but you're seeing cases of this in younger people, correct?
DAVIDSON: It's a known fact that one in five teens has fatty liver disease. That's on us as parents to really kind of think about, because it's all those energy drinks and the processed food and not exercising that are starting to get to kids, and there's a lot of 11- to 13-year-olds that are now getting cirrhosis of the liver from it.
It's important for us to really kind of step forward and think about the food that we're putting in our mouths.
THORINGTON: What kind of symptoms would someone show if they have any type of liver disease?
DAVIDSON: They can have itching. They can have discoloration or yellowing of the skin, or the yellowing of their eyes. Those are some of the top ones that they have. There can be pain on your right side that is kind of harsh on you.
Those are some of the ones that you have. But the thing about the liver, it can be kind of like the kidneys. They can be kind of silent. It may be functioning OK, but it may be getting sicker, and you don't really realize it.
The best way to know about your liver is to make sure that when they do your major blood test, they check your blood levels. There's an ALT and AST that they do in order to see where your levels are, and it's important for those levels to be within a certain range. And if it's under or over, you might need to check in and talk to somebody a little bit more about your liver.
THORINGTON: A liver specialist is known as a hepatologist, but finding one is a problem, isn't it?
DAVIDSON: The problem in the South is there's not enough hepatologists for everybody to see. And what we have to do is try to work with the doctors that you're seeing, that are working with you on your liver disease, whether it be your PCP, your nurse practitioner, your GI doctor. All of those doctors work with the liver, but the hepatologist is the specialist, and they're the ones that really know about the liver and how it works and what's happening with it.
In the Mid-South region, we have 10 transplant centers. We're very fortunate to have that many transplant centers in our six states. However, it can be hard to get in to see a hepatologist.
In Mississippi, there are only two hepatologists in the whole state. In Alabama, there’s an eight-month waiting list. In Louisiana, Tennessee and Kentucky, it can be anywhere from a three- to six-month waiting list to see a doctor.
We are trying to help educate the PCPs, the nurse practitioners, and the GIs more on liver disease.
THORINGTON: How prevalent is liver disease in the six states that the Mid-South Liver Alliance represents?
DAVIDSON: It's determined that with the number of diabetics and the number of obesity cases that we have, there are probably over 9 million people diagnosed with fatty liver disease or MASLD, and then many others are unaware that they even have it.
It's something that is becoming almost an epidemic, and especially in the South because of our lifestyle habits in that we all love our fried foods, we all love our sweet tea, but those are things that are hurting our body, and we need to try to think about ways we can change that.
THORINGTON: Are there some other diseases that make you more susceptible to having liver disease?
DAVIDSON: If you have diabetes, if you have obesity, which is a BMI over 30, if you have high blood pressure, if you have high cholesterol, if you're a heavy drinker, all of that puts you at risk.
THORINGTON: You have a program coming up this weekend in Gonzales. Tell us a little bit about that and why people should go.
DAVIDSON: These are summits that we have in a lot of the different states, and we try to get the patients that have just found out maybe they have fatty liver disease or have found out they have some kind of liver disease and they're not sure about it.
I try to have speakers who talk about the different diseases as well as give them information that they may need. We have a transplant panel at the end that talks about how transplants are done and what they're about, and you have some patients that actually share their journeys. It's an educational summit, and it's designed for patients living with chronic liver disease, along with their caregivers and family members.
THORINGTON: What are some of the topics that'll be discussed at the summit?
DAVIDSON: Well, we're really fortunate to have a couple of patient advocates coming in to talk. Terri Milton is out of Texas, and Susan Horava is out of Ohio. Terri's going to be talking about being your own best advocate, and then Susan's going to be talking about the importance of diet and exercise for the care of your liver.
Then we also have Dr. John Seal, who's going to be talking about transplant and cancer discussions. Then Dr. George Therpanderis is going to be talking about how the liver works so that everybody kinda understands what's happening with it, no matter which disease it is that you have.
We'll also have a discussion on organ donation, self-care and then the transplant discussion with team members from the transplant team at Ochsner, as well as some transplant patients who are going to share their journeys.
To calculate your risk for liver disease, click here.