Q&A With Col. Stephen Harrison From Brooke Army Medical Center: Treating Liver Disease In Military And Civilian Patients Now And In The Future

Hepatologists around the world are seeing an influx of patients with various liver conditions including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Finding ways to treat these patients has become a growing area of the field.

Col. Stephen Harrison, MD, from Brooke Army discussed these and other topics during a recent interview from the San Antonio facility.

Unlike other conditions where symptoms are obvious which helps with treatment, liver diseases are much more difficult to determine which makes patient education a key component in treatment.

Hepatitis C may be a largely treatable condition but the work is not done for people who have this condition. It is just one part of a larger puzzle of liver disease that hepatologists and general practitioners are facing on a daily basis.

A person's diet can be as much a part of their cultural identity as anything else, convincing them that changing that diet to improve their health can sometimes be an uphill battle. In liver disease diet changes can be more effective than surgical options currently available.

Being a doctor is a full time job in itself, when you combine being an officer in the armed forces it can change your whole perspective on your job and why you do it all the while looking at what might be next for your patients.