Drug Hepatoxicity, An Issue of Clinics in Liver Disease

9781416050506

1416050507

Drug hepatotoxicity is one of the current hot topics in hepatology and internal medicine for that matter. In the last 5 years, two drugs have been withdrawn for significant liver injury causing death or need for transplantation; additionally, others have not been approved and several have had black box warning labels placed due to concerns that the risk is small but significant for harmful outcomes. The present volume is intended to review our current understanding of the principles underlying our understanding of the problems associated with drug-related liver injury: what the pathogenetic mechanism are, how the condition is diagnosed, what drugs are associated with drug-induced liver injury and how these conditions present. The reader should be well-advised that there are few absolutes in this area and a lot of opinion but as we know more, we can be more careful about using drugs in our everyday practice of the best of 21st century medicine. This is a volume for anyone who regularly prescribes drugs for his/her patients and who is concerned enough to wish to avoid pitfalls in doing so.