Hepatobiliary Diseases: Diagnosis and Management — 2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

In the last decade, the global burden of liver disease and cirrhosis has increased. Viral hepatitis remains the most common cause of liver deaths, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most rapidly growing contributor to liver mortality and morbidity. Liver disease accounts for approximately 2 million deaths per year worldwide, 1 million due to complications of cirrhosis and 1 million due to viral hepatitis and hepatocellular carcinoma. With improvements in the management and treatment of viral hepatitis, the burden of liver disease is shifting toward alcoholic liver disease (ALD) and NAFLD.

Around 2 billion people consume alcohol worldwide and more than 75 million are diagnosed with alcohol-use disorders and are at risk of alcohol-associated liver disease. Approximately 2 billion adults are obese or overweight and over 400 million have diabetes; both diseases are closely related to NAFLD and, consequently, to hepatocellular carcinoma. Today, NAFLD is the most common chronic liver disease. Drug-induced liver injury continues to increase as a major cause of acute hepatitis. Liver transplantation is the second most common solid organ transplantation. Though these numbers are sobering, they highlight an important opportunity to improve public health given that most causes of liver diseases are preventable. Thus, timely diagnosis and treatment of it are of great importance. Recently, many noninvasive methods are investigating steatosis and fibrosis, as well as portal hypertension. Endoscopic methods such as endoscopic ultrasound are intensively investigated for hepatology. We must keep in mind that different diseases can affect the biliary tract. The symptoms and signs of such diseases are similar. Conditions affecting the biliary tract can be life-threatening and often difficult to diagnose. It is important to diagnose them quickly because some of them, such as cholangiocarcinoma or periampullary tumors, have a poor prognosis because at the time of diagnosis, they are often unresectable.

The aim of this Special Issue is to share up-to-date information about the diagnosis and treatment of hepatobiliary disease. The scope of the issue will include recent knowledge regarding the NAFLD, noninvasive methods of steatosis and fibrosis detection, detection of portal hypertension, advancement of endohepatology, and new diagnostic methods for periampullary tumor detection as well as up-to-date information about the treatment of common hepatobiliary diseases.

Prof. Dr. Ivana Mikolašević
Guest Editor

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• chronic liver diseases
• nonalcoholic fatty liver disease
• portal hypertension
• noninvasive methods for steatosis and fibrosis detection
• endohepatology
• new drugs in hepatology
• new diagnostic methods for periampullary tumor detection
• treatment of biliary diseases