Biliary atresia is a potentially lethal congenital liver health condition in newborns. It means your bile ducts fail to develop properly because they’re either blocked or absent. This causes the inability of bile to drain from the liver to the intestine.
Bile is assorted chemicals that your liver has filtered out of circulation and then normally is excreted through the biliary system into the intestine. On its way out, bile salts participate in the digesting fats and cholesterol. Biliary atresia prevents this elimination, so bile backs up in the liver and overflows out into the rest of you.
The backed up bile is what causes biliary atresia’s primary symptom of jaundice. The major pigment of bile is yellow, hence your yellow skin. And bile is what turns your stools brown, so the lack of bile is what causes the other primary biliary atresia symptom of clay colored stools.
Other biliary atresia symptoms may include:
- ascites
- dark urine
- weight loss
- slow growth
- enlarged spleen
- floating, foul odor stools
Jaundice during the first couple weeks of life is normal because of liver immaturity. But if your newborn’s skin continues to yellow thereafter, they need to be checked by a health care provider for a possible liver problem.
It is not known what causes this yellow skin jaundice and clay colored stools health condition, but possible triggering factors for biliary atresia may be:
Whenever bile builds up it can damage your liver. As such, some of possible complications of untreated biliary atresia may include:
Symptoms indicating cirrhosis include easy bruising, excessive bleeding and pruritus caused by bile irritating your skin’s nerve endings. If your liver fails to work properly, then death will likely ensue if left untreated.
Initial treatment for biliary atresia is an operation known as Kasai procedure. A common complication of this procedure is cholangitis, or bile ducted infection. And antibiotics usually takes care of this issue.
The sooner the Kasai procedure is done the better your chances are of its success. And if it should fail, the next treatment step is a liver transplant.