The liver during and after fulminant hepatitis.

Within 5 to 14 days of onset of grade 3 or 4 coma, liver biopsies were obtained in 14 of 15 consecutive patients who recovered from fulminant hepatitis. In 9 patients, follow-up biopsy was obtained 6 to 60 months after acute hepatitis and autopsy was performed in 2 patients who died in 4 months from complications of hepatitis (aplastic anemia) or of corticosteroid therapy (sepsis). During fulminant illness the biopsy findings were: multilobular necrosis in 4 patients, confluent (bridging) necrosis in 9, and only portal inflammation in 1. The duration or the grade of coma did not correlate with the severity of necrosis on the biopsy. Follow-up biopsy showed development of chronic (active) hepatitis in 3 of 9 patients (with cirrhosis in one of these). Chronic liver disease was not found in the two autopsies. If fulminant hepatitis is the result of vigorous cell-mediated immune attack on hepatocytes, then this process cannot always eradicate chronic hepatitis B surface antigenemia, nor can it always prevent the development of chronic (active) hepatitis or cirrhosis.