 Hello. I would like to wish everyone a happy World Liver Health Day, which we will be celebrating shortly. After all, life depends on the liver. My name is Dr. Harshad Rajakar. I am the liver transplant surgeon at Manipal Hospital, Khara Deepune. I also look at medical problems concerning the liver. We celebrate World Liver Health Day every April, and this year the WHO theme for the World Liver Health Day is monitor your liver function. You don't know. Most of us have a fatty liver and you will not know it unless you test for it. Fatty liver is a very silent killer. Our livers are generally big in size, about one and a half to two kilograms. And generally, until more than two-thirds of the liver gets damaged, there are no symptoms whatsoever. Most of us will have fatty liver, so unless we test, we will not come through. Our modern lifestyles have revolved around excess calorie intake, less exercise, more carbohydrate intakes, some amount of alcohol intake, and a large pandemic of type 2 diabetes, that is engulfing the whole group. Type 2 diabetes is one of the big pandemic that involves the metabolic syndrome of which fatty liver is also a part of it. Fatty liver is development of fat within the liver, storage of excess fat within the liver, which may be of two types. One that is just fat present in the liver without damaging the liver, that is called as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. About 20% of these NAFLD or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease will progress to what is called as NASH or non-alcoholic state or hepatitis. Hepatitis means inflammation. So inflammation in the liver because of fat is the liver getting damaged because of the fat. This is dangerous. Over a significant period of time, over the next 10 to 15 years, this may progress to permanent scarring of the liver and liver damage. Today, the number of patients dying of liver failure or liver cirrhosis, fatty liver contributes a majority of these patients. Almost 36% of patients having liver failure will be as a result of fatty liver disease as opposed to hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and alcohol that used to be previously. Fatty liver itself is also a very common pre-discursor or high risk for developing liver cancer. Most patients with fatty liver disease who get liver cancer may not get liver cirrhosis, but the student will get a liver cancer. So unless we test, we will not know. The recommended guideline is that people at a low risk, that is who are not obese, who don't have diabetes, who don't have a family history, should get tested every year after the age of 35 and for people with high risk should get tested every 6 months after the age of 35. Testing will involve a short series of blood tests and a periodic ultrasound examination. The ultrasound will tell you the degree of fatty liver and or the development of any new lesions or cancers or anything else in the liver. What we test, we will come to know. Whatever we can know, we can treat. So treating is dependent on finding things early. If things get too advanced, then we can't treat them. So this year's theme, that is test your liver before it's too late, is probably at the right time. We should monitor our liver function tests and get a health check done regularly. Thank you.