harka

Hi Wayne,

First of all, I can't offer any diagnoses on a forum like this because, well, making a diagnosis based on symptoms alone without seeing a patient is impossible.

Second, the only thing one can glean from the symptoms you mention are the fact that the person has liver disease. Regardless of which liver disease you have, if the liver becomes sufficiently damaged and is not able to function properly, you will get those symptoms. So for example, if someone has decompensated cirrhosis from Hepatitis C vs. someone having decompensated cirrhosis from alcoholic liver disease, the basic symptoms would be the same.

In your friend's father's case, he probably has cirrhosis, and unless the cause of the cirrhosis is reversible, the only thing you CAN do is treat the symptoms. People nowadays often become untrusting of doctors and say what you said, "I feel like the doctor is treating the symptoms not the cause". While as a general principle treating the cause of something is better than just the symptoms, often you don't KNOW the cause. This happens a lot with chronic liver disease. I assure you the people who are looking after your friend's father are trained in internal medicine +/- gastroenterology/hepatology. They know what they're doing--especially given the fact you have told me they have put him on steroids. Does your friend's father drink alot of alcohol? Prednisolone is sometimes used in the treatment of alcoholic hepatitis. It is also used in a condition known as autoimmune hepatitis (though that usually presents in young women).

In any person who presents with signs of chronic liver disease, they will get a minimum workup to rule out the following diseases:

Hepatitis B and C
Alcoholic liver disease
Wilson's Disease
Hemochromatosis
Alpha-1 antitrypsin Defiency
Autoimmune liver disease
Primary Biliary Cirrhosis
Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis
Drug induced liver disease
Structural liver problems (e.g. Budd-Chiari syndrome)
Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver disease

I might be forgetting something, but you get the idea. The above conditions are ruled in/out with a complete history/physical, battery of blood tests and liver imaging via ultrasound. Unfortunately even after all of this, a cause is not found. These are sometimes known as cryptogenic cirrhosis, though many people nowadays think that most cryptogenic cirrhosis is actually Non-Alcoholid Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD).