Hepatic encephalopathy care at Mayo Clinic
Your Mayo Clinic care team
At Mayo Clinic, a multidisciplinary team of specialists work together to evaluate and treat each individual. With 13 specialty groups and more than 140 digestive disease specialists on staff, the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Mayo Clinic is one of the largest and most experienced in the world.
Advanced diagnosis and treatment
Precise staging of hepatic encephalopathy is important to planning treatment. Mayo Clinic researchers invented magnetic resonance elastography, a noninvasive test that maps hardening of the liver. This state-of-the-art imaging helps Mayo specialists find liver disease early, giving people the opportunity to start treatment sooner and helping to improve outcomes. People being treated at Mayo Clinic also are among the first to benefit from new findings made at Mayo.
Expertise and rankings
Mayo Clinic doctors have expertise and experience in evaluating and caring for people who have hepatic encephalopathy. Every year, nearly 8,000 people are treated at Mayo Clinic for cirrhosis, a key cause of hepatic encephalopathy. If a liver transplant is necessary, all Mayo campuses have transplant centers. Mayo surgeons have performed thousands of liver transplants, and the Mayo Clinic Liver Transplant Program has one of the best long-term survival rates in the country.
Pioneers in research
In addition to inventing technology to accurately diagnose liver disease, Mayo Clinic researchers developed the Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD). The MELD scoring system is used nationwide to assess people's disease progression and allocate organs for transplant.
Nationally recognized expertise
Mayo Clinic's Liver Transplant Program was established in 1985. In 2016, Mayo Clinic's Florida campus completed its 3,000th liver transplant, a milestone that very few centers nationwide have achieved. And Mayo Clinic's Arizona campus has completed more than 1,000 liver transplants.
Liver transplant outcomes compare favorably with the national average.
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, ranks No. 1 for digestive disorders in the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals rankings. Mayo Clinic in Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona, and Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, are ranked among the Best Hospitals for digestive disorders by U.S. News & World Report. Mayo Clinic Children's in Rochester is ranked the No. 1 hospital in Minnesota, and the five-state region of Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, according to U.S. News & World Report's 2024–2025 "Best Children's Hospitals" rankings.