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health advisory Hospital Diseases 2007-11-12 20:36:04

Due to alcoholism my husband has amonia built up in his brain. He is 50, but he processes like he is an old man with Alzheimers. Three weeks ago he went through detox and now he is in a nursing home where he his being treated to get rid of the high levels of toxins. A nurse told me today that sometimes patients can die from this. . How likely or unlikely is it that he'll recover?

Answer:

It sounds like he may have hepatic encephalopathy (HE), which can be fatal in serious cases. Your husband's liver may have been damaged to the extent where it can no longer do its job, and excessive amounts of ammonia may have entered his brain.

"Some forms of HE are reversible, but the development of overt HE carries a poor prognosis. Recovery and recurrence rates vary, but without liver transplantation the 1-year survival is only 40%. Both acute and chronic HE, once advanced to stage 4 (coma), are associated with 80% overall mortality."

http://www.clevelandclinicmeded.com/dise...

For less technical information:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/...

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/a...

I think you need to talk with his doctor about his diagnosis and what his future looks like. There's no way to really answer this question over the internet.

Good luck. I hope he makes it.

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probably not very...if he's at the stage where he has dementia, then he's pretty far gone. His liver has quit doing it's job, getting rid of toxins in the blood, which means it's shut down.