Jaundice

How do you diagnose jaundice? And treatment.

Jaundice is a non-communicable still life-threatening disease. It is associated with the symptoms of other underlying diseases too. There are various recognizable symptoms found and causes too. You must be careful going through any of those causes.

Jaundice can be found in three types of conditions such as;

  1. Hepatocellular or hepatic condition: It occurs due to liver injury or another liver-related disease.
  2. Hemolytic or pre-hepatic condition: It occurs due to hemolysis (Intense rise in the breakdown and destruction of the red blood cells) which leads to increased production of bilirubin
  3. Obstructive Jaundice or post-hepatic condition: An obstruction of the bile duct is the chief cause of this type which prevents bilirubin comes out of the liver.

Diagnosis

To treat this condition certainly, there is a need for proper examination. When you find any such symptoms mentioned or underlying any of these diseases, you should get the doctor. Because these initial symptoms can lead you to many other uncertain complications.

At the beginning of the treatment, the doctor will ask for the medical history and symptoms occurring. If there is a bit surmise of jaundice they will check the abdomen to feel any a tumor or swelling of the liver. This close attention towards the abdomen helps them find or to be suspicious about a few serious ailments of the liver such as firm liver indicates cirrhosis, rock-hard liver indicates cancer.

By and by, the doctor will ask you to do a few tests to confirm the real cause and initiate the treatment. Tests will be to know the well functioning of the liver, bilirubin levels, and the compositions of the blood.

These tests may include:

  • Bilirubin test
  • Full Blood Count (FBC) or Complete Blood Count (CBC)
  • Hepatitis A, B and C tests

Later if anything is serious, they will ask you to carry out MRI, CT and ultrasound scans, Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), liver biopsy. These are the rare tests you need to go through only if they suspect any serious obstruction (1).

Treatment

Once the doctor discovered the cause and intensity of it, can start the treatment. Because, in this ailment, the doctor targets the cause rather than the symptoms. It actually needs to take treatment according to the underlying diseases which may require hospitalization or may not.  Let us see some treatments for an instance-

  • Anemia induced jaundice may be treated under careful observation at home with close monitoring of the doctor. At home, you can take iron-rich foods or supplements. You can have green leaves of radish which could be the complete cure sometimes, tomato juice, sugarcane juice, lemon juice, and the most important an ample amount of water.
  • Hepatitis induced jaundice requires antiviral or steroid medications
  • If drug or toxin is the cause, must be discontinued immediately
  • Surgical treatment may require if it is obstruction-induced

This write-up may have cleared the idea of causes along with homemade treatments at an initial phase of jaundice. But you need to look after the doctor if it is serious or should take supportive treatment to know the cause. Because, here or there at the hospital, our eventual desire is to be healthy and better.

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