NJlivercare.org

The Center for Liver Disease and Cancer Care at St. Joseph's Medical Center is dedicated to advocacy, education, prevention, multi-disciplinary treatment, advanced surgery, advanced interventional radiology, clinical trials and scientific development of better therapies. To reduce the health burden of liver disease, we need to find and treat those afflicted by liver disease, and advocate lifestyles that promote good health and prevent liver damage.

There are over 60,000 people in New Jersey with cirrhosis. For each person recieving a liver transplant, there are 500-1000 people with cirrhosis and continued risk for liver cancer or liver failure. The number of organ donors will remain mostly unchanged. Undiagnosed, the number of people with liver failure will grow, resulting in more patients dying while awaiting liver transplant. As the distribution of donor livers has been prioritized to patients with a MELD score greater than 35, a large void exists for patients with a MELD less than 25. This largely affects patients with early liver cancer, poorly controlled ascites and poorly controlled encephalopathy. Live donor liver transplant is a viable option for these patients, who are still clearly in need of a liver transplant.

Early diagnosis and treatment of chronic viral hepatitis can eradicate infection and reduce the risk of liver failure and liver cancer. Currently the average cost of a liver transplant is $285,000 to $315,000. Although liver transplant is life saving, there is a great need to improve early diagnosis and treatment to more effectively deal with this epidemic. Unfortunately 70-80 percent of people with hepatitis C or B are not diagnosed. Now is the time to find infected patients with hepatitis C and get them into treatment.

Similarly, 70-80 percent of patients diagnosed with liver cancer are not curable, and will die within 5 years of diagnosis. The biggest barrier to improving survival is most people are diagnosed too late. There is a great need to identify people who may benefit from routine liver cancer screening.