Cirrhosis is a severe form of liver scarring that may increase your risk of complications and dying.

There’s no cure for cirrhosis, but a doctor may recommend a liver transplant surgery if you have decompensated cirrhosis, which is when your liver is no longer functioning. This is the traditional surgery for cirrhosis.

During a liver transplant, a team of healthcare professionals will replace your liver with the healthy liver of a donor. After the surgery, you’ll no longer have a liver with cirrhosis in your body.

Recent research suggests that other types of surgery may help manage cirrhosis or even reverse some of the damage.

For instance, a 2019 study in 62 people with cirrhosis and portal hypertension found that a splenectomy may help reverse the damage of cirrhosis over time. This is a surgery that involves taking out your spleen.

Despite these findings, splenectomy isn’t considered a common treatment for cirrhosis. More research is needed to fully understand its possible role in cirrhosis management.

People living with cirrhosis are three times more likely to develop complications before, during, or after any type of surgery than people without the liver condition.

This may be due to several disease-related and surgery-related factors, including:

A healthcare professional will assess the risks before making any surgery recommendations to help prevent possible complications. These may include:

Cirrhosis is a severe form of liver scarring that usually requires a combination of lifestyle changes and medications to help manage the condition.

If medical treatments don’t help, a doctor may recommend getting a liver transplant to increase your quality of life and life expectancy.