Description
Mary Katherine Rude, M.D., is a hepatologist and transplant hepatologist at UAMS Health. She provides expert care for patients with a wide range of liver conditions, from elevated liver enzymes and viral hepatitis to cirrhosis, fatty liver disease, and liver cancer. As one of only four hepatologists in Arkansas, Dr. Rude also plays a key role in the UAMS Liver Transplant Clinic, helping patients with advanced liver disease receive life-saving transplants. In this video, Dr. Rude shares what makes her work so meaningful, the variety of patients she treats, and her passion for helping people return to healthy, fulfilling lives after transplant.
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Transcript
My name is Katie Rude. I am a hepatologist and a transplant hepatologist at UAMS.
So, hepatology is the discipline that deals with liver disease in general, and so that is a very broad topic. We see patients with any form of acute liver problem. That can be something as simple as elevated liver enzymes. And then we see patients who have chronic liver disease in the form of cirrhosis—and even decompensated cirrhosis. There’s great variety in that.
We’re treating patients with viral hepatitis. We’re seeing patients who have an autoimmune liver disease. We even see patients who just have abnormalities on their liver imaging.
A big part of my practice is also seeing patients in the liver transplant clinic.
We also see metabolic-associated steatotic liver disease—that is previously known as fatty liver disease or NASH. It now has a new name for it.
There are very few hepatologists in the state of Arkansas. In fact, there are only four of us. Anyone who has a liver problem—or especially anyone who has chronic liver disease and decompensated cirrhosis—should be referred to our clinic to be able to be taken care of by someone with specialized training in hepatology.
I think one of the most fulfilling things to me is the liver transplant clinic. You know, seeing patients that are extremely sick that we know will die relatively soon without liver transplant, and just using our multidisciplinary team to take care of them quickly and efficiently, get them listed for transplant, and then watch them undergo a liver transplant—and then seeing them for the rest of their lives.
And, you know, within a couple months after transplant, they are a completely different person—healthy, doing all the things that they love to do outside of the hospital.
Outside of the hospital, I really like to be outside and travel. My family and I—we have two young daughters, and my husband’s a physician as well—we’re trying to go to as many of the national parks as we can
