The diagnosis of liver disease depends upon a complete history, complete physical examination, and evaluation of liver function tests and further invasive and noninvasive tests.
Many patients become confused regarding the meaning of a liver function test.
This section is designed to describe the basic liver function tests and the meaning for patients. The hepatobiliary tree represents hepatic cells and biliary tract cells. Inflammation of the biliary tract cells results predominantly in an elevation of the alkaline phosphatase. In liver disease there are crossovers between purely biliary disease and hepatocellular disease. To interpret these, the physician will look at the entire picture of the hepatocellular disease and biliary tract disease to determine which is the primary abnormality.