Pregnancy and liver disease.

Liver dysfunction can appear at any point of pregnancy and causes great anxiety to the patient, her family and sometimes her medical attendants. This review concentrates on conditions specific to pregnancy (hyperemesis gravidarum, intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy, toxemia of pregnancy, HELLP syndrome) and provides a guide in diagnosis and management of hepatobiliary conditions that are probably related to pregnancy (e.g., gallstones, Budd-Chiari syndrome) or that are not specific to pregnancy (e.g., acute viral hepatitis), and also the situations in which pregnancy occurs during pre-existing liver disease (e.g., chronic active hepatitis, cirrhosis, Dubin-Johnson syndrome, Wilson's disease).