Fibroscan for assessing liver fibrosis: An acceptable alternative for liver biopsy: Fibroscan: an acceptable alternative for liver biopsy.
Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: There is now adequate evidence to indicate that liver fi-brosis is a dynamic rather than a static process and as effec-tive antiviral and other specific therapies became available, fibrosis and even cirrhosis could become reversible (1, 2). Effective and early therapy of viral and autoimmune hepa-titis could result in reversibility of cirrhosis in addition to clinical cure (1-3). Therefore, we urgently need to be able to follow the progression or regression of fibrosis in response to therapy in addition to initial assessment of fibrosis by liver biopsy. Liver biopsy which was first introduced in 1923 has been used widely in the diagnosis of liver diseases and is still the gold standard reference for the assessment of liver fibrosis during the course of chronic liver diseases (4, 5). But this procedure is costly, painful and runs a small risk of sever complications like hemorrhage and even death; there-fore, it is unacceptable to patients and doctors alike (5). It is also time-consuming and labor-intensive; the assessment is subjective and due to small size of the specimen in setting of heterogeneity of liver fibrosis is prone to sampling error. There is now increasing evidence that sampling error (up to 35%), inter- and intra-observer variability (up to 20%) for a particular stage between pathologist are major problems which may preclude accurate fibrosis staging for individual patients with liver biopsy (4-6). For the said reasons and especially in chronic liver disease where monitoring the evolution of disease or response to treatment may require repeated assessments, the discipline of hepatology need
Source: Europe PMC (PubMed Central)
Authors: Reza Malekzadeh, Hossein Poustchi
Language: English
Subfield: Hepatology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2136383542