Your condition

Your doctor has diagnosed you as having CLD with thrombocytopenia (pronounced thrombo-syto-peenya).

The liver is the largest internal organ in the body, lying under the ribs on the right side of the stomach. It performs many important jobs in the body, including:

• Removing waste from the body, such as toxins and medicines
• Making bile to help digest food
• Storing sugars, vitamins and iron that the body uses for energy
• Making and storing amino acids (the building blocks used by the body to make proteins), proteins and fats

Having CLD means that your liver is not functioning as well as it should, and ‘chronic’ means that this is a long-term condition.

There are many reasons why you may have CLD, which could include among others:

• Catching viral infections such as hepatitis A, hepatitis B or hepatitis C
• Being overweight (build-up of fat in and around the liver)
• Drinking too much alcohol
• Haemachromatosis (pronounced heema-croma-toe-sis) – An inherited condition where iron levels in the body slowly build up over many years
• Primary biliary cirrhosis – An autoimmune condition where your body’s immune system mistakenly attacks the bile ducts, causing liver inflammation

As well as the liver not being as functional as it should be, CLD patients will often also suffer from a condition called thrombocytopenia.

Having thrombocytopenia means you have fewer platelets flowing around your blood stream than you should have. This is because your CLD has resulted in the body making fewer and not releasing available platelets into the blood.

Platelets perform an essential role in helping your blood to clot and stop you bleeding if you have had a wound or a bruise.

So, having a low number of platelets in your blood means that if you have a wound or are bruised, it can be more difficult for your blood to clot to stop the bleeding.

As a consequence, this means that if you need to undergo any kind of procedure or surgery either to help treat your CLD or as a routine requirement, like having a tooth removed, then you may be at greater risk of bleeding.