Diseases of the Liver and Biliary System in Children

Dr Deirdre Kelly is a consultant pediatric hepatologist at the Liver Unit of Birmingham Children's Hospital and Reader in Paediatric Hepatology at the University of Birmingham. She was born and brought up in Calcutta, India, in the post-Raj era while her father was working for Lipton's Tea. She spent her early childhood in India and went to boarding school in Dublin when she was 12 years old. She first decided to become a doctor at the age of 8 and despite much opposition from family and nuns at her convent school, persisted and went to Trinity College Dublin to study medicine in 1967. She originally planned to be a General Practitioner but in her Senior House Officer days was encouraged to take an academic line and apply for General Medicine rotations and take the membership exams. She trained first in adult medicine, and then in gastroenterology and hepatology in Dublin with Professor Donald Weir who encouraged her to do an MD thesis on folate catabolism with Professor John Scott, a world authority on folate metabolism. While in Dublin she had her two delightful sons while juggling research/academic medicine/clinical practice and discovered the joys of being a mother. In 1982, she moved to London to work with Dame Sheila Sherlock at the Royal Free Hospital, where she became interested in pediatric hepatology. Dr Kelly retrained in pediatrics with Professor Otto Wolff at Great Ormond Street and Professor John Walker Smith at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hackney. In 1987 she went to work as an Assistant Professor in Pediatric Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University of Nebraska in Omaha US. Dr Kelly used this time to learn about caring for children undergoing liver transplantation. Equipped with these new skills she returned to Birmingham in 1989 to set up a National Liver Unit to care for children with liver disease and undergoing liver transplantation. The Unit has been very successful and is one of the busiest pediatric liver transplant programmes with survival rates of > 90%. Dr Kelly now has three other consultant colleagues and a team of junior doctors, research fellows, specialist nurses and other valuable members of the multidisciplinary team. They have achieved international standards for care of children with liver disease and liver transplantation and currently are the only unit in the UK to provide small bowel transplantation for children. They have expanded their research programme to look at mechanisms which control the development of biliary epithelial cells, the underlying mechanisms for the pathophysiology of malnutrition in children with liver disease and the natural history and management of chronic viral hepatitis in childhood. They have a major interest in the outcome and quality of life following transplantation.

Section 1: Structure, Function and Repair. 1. Structure, Function and Repair. Ulrich Baumann, Rachel Brown, Alastair Millar, Bobbie Jones, Patrick McKiernan. Section 2: Investigating the Liver. 2. The approach to the child with liver disease: Differential diagnosis and useful investigations. Deirdre Kelly. 3. Interventional Radiology in the Diagnosis & Management of Liver Disease. Philip John. Section 3: Supporting the Family. 4. The Effects on Mother and Child. Jane Hartley. Section 4: Neonatal Liver Disease. 5. The Jaundiced Baby. Eve Roberts. 6. The Acutely Ill Baby. Patrick McKiernan. Section 5: Acute Liver Disease. 7. Infective disorders of the liver. Suzanne Davison, Elizabeth Boxall. 8. Fulminant Hepatitis and Acute Liver Failure. Estella Alonso, Rob Squires, Peter Whitington. Section 6: Liver Disease in Older Children. 9. Auto Immune Liver Disease. Giorgina Mieli-Vergani, Diego Vergani. 10. Drug Induced Liver Disease. Karen Murray. 11. Congenital and Structural Abnormalities of the Liver. Jaime Liou Wolfe, Kathleen Schwarz. 12. Non-Alcoholic Steatosis. Eve Roberts. 13. Hepatobiliary Disease in Cystic Fibrosis. Carla Colombo. Section 7: Metabolic Liver Disease. 14. Metabolic Liver Disease in Older Children. Anne Green, Anupam Chakrapani. 15. Disorders of Copper Metabolism. Stuart Tanner. Section 8: Management of Chronic Liver Disease. 16. Complications and Management of Chronic Liver Disease. Ross Shepherd. Section 9: The Liver and other Organs. 17. The Liver in Systemic Illness. Sue Beath. 18. Skin Disorders in Liver Disease. Indra van Mourik, Michelle Thomson. 19. Dental Care of Children with Liver Disease. Marie-Therese Hosey, Victoria Clark. Section 10: Surgical Management of Liver Disease. 20. Surgical Disorders of the Liver and Bile Ducts. Alastair Millar. 21. Primary Hepatic Tumours. Bruce Morland, Jean De Ville. Section 11: Transplantation. 22. Liver Transplantation. Deirdre Kelly, A. Mayer. 23. Small Bowel and Liver Transplantation. Jorge Reyes. Section 12: The Developing World. 24. Liver Disease in the Developing World. Anupam Sibal, S. Quak, M. Chang. Section 13: Supporting the Family. 25. The role of the Multi Disciplinary Team. Graham Gordon, Julie Reed, Jacqueline Blyth, Carolyn Patchell. 26. Transition to Adult Care. Janet McDonagh, Deirdre Kelly