Acute Alcoholic Hepatitis

Abstract

In alcoholic patients the liver may be involved in a variety of ways ranging from fatty infiltration, acute "hepatitis," and sub-massive necrosis to the more chronic forms of cirrhosis. Attention has recently been called to a form of hepatic injury characterized by inflammatory and degenerative changes with or without accompanying fibrosis or cirrhosis which has been reported under various designations. Impressed with the rather uniform symptoms, signs, and laboratory features encountered in such patients, we decided to study a group of 50 cases (seen during a five-year period extending from January, 1957, to February, 1962), all of whom had a needle biopsy of the liver. Arbitrarily included in this study were only those cases in which needle specimens of the liver showed each of the following changes: cellular necrosis, fatty metamorphosis, inflammatory reactive changes, and alcoholic hyaline degeneration (Mallory bodies). It is realized that all of these changes may not