One thing that’s hard to do is learn something when you don’t understand the terms being used.
Fibrosis is a great example of this. We have cystic fibrosis. On last week’s podcast, I talked about cirrhosis of the liver which is defined as fibrosis of the liver.
Fibrosis is actually an easy term, but for some reason it took me a long time to wrap my head around what it meant.
It basically means scar tissue. What happens in the case of cirrhosis of the liver is that healthy tissue gets damaged and then is replaced by scar tissue. That scar tissue is not functioning, so it doesn’t do the work of the liver. That scar tissue doesn’t clear bilirubin. That scar tissue doesn’t create the protein albumin. That scar tissue doesn’t create clotting factors. That scar tissue doesn’t clear ammonia from the bloodstream.
So, it makes sense cirrhosis of the liver is bad. And the more you have of it, the worse it is.
It makes sense that ammonia levels would go up, that albumin levels would go down, that bilirubin levels would go up, and that bleeding times would go up.
I could be wrong, but I think it’s a whole lot easier to remember this stuff if you understand how it works.
Memorizing list after list is hard. Remembering that scar tissue doesn’t function like regular tissue is easy.
If you’d like to remember even more medical facts, then get yourself a copy and work with The Final Step. Working with that book will lock medical content in your brain like nothing else.
Brian Wallace