[Acute liver failure as a rare case of a frequent disease].

Here we report the case of a 63-year-old female patient who was admitted with acute liver failure. The etiology turned out to be an acute fulminant hepatitis caused by hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection of unknown origin. Fulminant hepatitis due to acute hepatitis C is very rare and hardly reported but a potential cause of acute liver failure due to massive hepatic necrosis, which may lead to encephalitis and multi-organ-failure. During follow-up spontaneous virological clearance was observed. The case illustrates that acute HCV infection, which is confirmed by the detection of HCV-RNA, has to be considered in the differential diagnosis of acute liver failure.