Liver trauma

To diagnose a liver injury, liver trauma doctor usually uses a combination of tests.

FAST – (Focused Abdominal Sonography for trauma) –  Its a painless imaging test that uses ultrasound waves to determine whether there’s active or significant bleeding in the liver.

CT scan: It is a painless imaging exam that can create images of the inside of your liver. This helps your doctor see how severe a liver injury is and if there’s damage to the deeper parts of your liver.

An angiogram, also known as an arteriogram , produces images of your arteries. Your doctor will use contrast material or dye, given through an IV, to look at the flow of blood. It can tell your doctor if blood is escaping through tears in the walls of the blood vessels in your liver. Ideally, your doctor can use these images to identify and stop the bleeding.

Your doctor can draw blood from a vein and test it to make sure your liver chemistry is healthy. This type of test can show whether you have the right levels of liver enzymes, proteins, and bilirubin in your blood. It can also tell if you have lost a significant amount of blood or have enough of the compounds you need to help your blood to clot.

Doctors can quickly perform most of these tests to determine whether there’s any damage to the liver and how severe it is. If you have other injuries, your doctor may use these and other tests to diagnose those injuries too.