| Abstract
| - Liver biopsy is a value technique for providing reliable information with which to accurately classify patients with alcoholic liver disease. It is also the most accurate discriminator for establishing the presence of alcoholic liver disease in patients known to have a heavy alcohol intake but without symptoms or signs suggestive of liver pathology. The evidence obtained from liver biopsy can often indicate the prognosis in a particular patient, and although the information from biopsy may not necessarily always lead to direct improvement of the individual patient, the data so collected may nonetheless help the community by contributing to our understanding of alcoholic liver disease with respect to its pathogenesis and natrual history. Accordingly, liver biopsy provides material for carrying out histochemical or ultrastructural assessment of the changes which may result from prolonged alcohol abuse and also acts as a yardstick of ‘underlying truth’ for evaluating the reliability of contemporary immunological and biochemical parameters which may prove to be useful in the classification of patients with alcoholic liver disease.
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