Booze Blues: A Case Study on the Liver

Three signs and/or symptoms that point to alcoholism.
Alcoholism is characterized by hyperglycemia, high blood glucose as it is not properly metabolized by the liver. People with alcoholic cirrhosis are unable to store glucose as glycogen thereby remaining in the blood. Moreover, the glucose cannot be metabolized since cirrhosis destroys the pancreas, leading to insufficiency of insulin. Another symptom is excessive bruising as evident on the patient, which is a result of frequent falls when drunk and dysfunctional clotting. Blood clotting factors and platelets are usually made in the liver but in case of alcoholism, the liver is unable to function well to produce them thus blood fails to coagulate. …show more content…
How do portal veins, hepatic veins, and sinusoids determine the function of the organ?
The portal vein supplies the liver with about 75 percent of its nutrient-rich blood from the spleen, pancreas, stomach, and intestines for release to other parts of the body. The hepatic artery, on the other hand, supplies the liver with the other 25 percent of blood from the abdominal aorta. This blood contains oxygen to refresh the metabolic hepatocytes. The sinusoids carry blood from the terminals of the portal vein and hepatic artery which lets solute and plasma into the area surrounding the hepatocytes, which enable blood filtration, processing and storing of nutrients, debris removal, and detoxification
Explain why increased venous pressure causes net filtration to increase in the hepatic capillaries, leading to ascites.
When a person suffers from alcoholic cirrhosis, their portal vein scars and blocks leading to increases in hydrostatic pressure which in turn heightens the capillary hydrostatic pressure. The disease also leads to low production of albumin thereby lowering the vasculature osmotic pressure and boosting filtration out of the