Abstract
Not all liver specimens sent for pathologic examination will show histologic abnormalities. There are several situations that can lead to this. First, the patient may have no disease affecting the liver. This can occur when a patient has “mildly elevated” aspartate transaminase (AST) and alanine transaminase (ALT) levels that are in fact physiologically normal for that patient or are due to an extrahepatic process or when the liver is sampled “just in case” (such as during an exploratory laparotomy). Another scenario is when a patient has a disease affecting the liver in a patchy or haphazard fashion, bringing the possibility of sampling error into play. Finally, a patient may have liver disease that is very early in its course, well controlled on medication, or resolving. (Special situations also exist, such as examining a biopsy from a potential donor liver; see Chap. 14.)
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Gonzalez, R.S., Washington, K. (2016). Normal or Nearly Normal Liver. In: Non-Neoplastic Liver Pathology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31424-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31424-2_2
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