To Help Reduce the Burden of Chronic Liver Disease, Primary Care Needs Simple, Reliable, Available Tools

Making an early diagnosis of chronic liver disease and being able to identify which patients should be referred to hepatology or gastroenterology and when both fall squarely under the purview of the primary care clinician, according to Bruce Luxon, MD, PhD.

Luxon, a transplant hepatologist and chairperson of medicine and chief physician at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC, recently spoke at The Liver Meeting on how to change the course of chronic liver disease in the US. An essential first step, he said in this conversation with Patient Care®, is to eradicate the stigma associated with chronic liver disease held by patients themselves, and also by clinicians. And that will take time.

As for the pivotal role of primary care in diagnosing chronic liver disease and stratifying risk, Luxon outlined what he has learned from those frontline clinicians about the tools they need to do this job most effectively.

Bruce A Luxon, MD, PhD is professor of medicine, Anton and Margaret Fuisz chair in medicine, at Georgetown University and chairperson of medicine and chief physician at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital, in Washington, DC.