New perspectives in hepatic encephalopathy.

The terminology of hepatic encephalopathy (HE) remained poorly defined for decades. One major problem was the lack of definition of what constituted acute versus chronic HE. Chronic HE caused more confusion because it was proposed to signify any bout of HE in patients with chronic liver disease, whereas others thought it denoted a protracted period of loss of consciousness. Numerous other versions were rampant. This mass confusion was solved by the report of the Hepatic Encephalopathy Consensus Group at the World Congress of Gastroenterology in 1998. This new multi-axial definition led to standardization of diagnosis and explosion in the field of research in HE.