The progression of liver fibrosis and the presence of portal hypertension are two key points in the follow-up and severity assessment of patients with chronic liver disease. Objective evaluation of such aspects has proven to be difficult due to the lack of reproducible and standardized non-invasive methods. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate whether spleen stiffness (SS) can rule out the presence of high-risk varices (HRVs) in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). We designed a prospective follow-up of a cohort of 48 consecutive patients diagnosed with compensated advanced chronic liver disease (cACLD) due to NAFLD, between January 2020 and January 2021. After clinical evaluation, laboratory testing, ultrasonography (US), and shear-wave elastography (2D-SWE.GE) of both the liver and the spleen, patients were endoscopically screened for esophageal varices, gastric varices, and portal hypertensive gastropathy. Correlations and predictors were assessed. After univariate, multivariate, and predictive analyses, SS could be referred to as an independent predictor for high-risk varices (AUROC 0.987, p < 0.001, OR 4.985, 95% CI: 1.57–15.73, p = 0.006), with a calculated cutoff value of 17.95 kPa. These results are consistent with those of other, similar studies using both 2D-SWE.GE and a similar module (2D-SWE.SSI) in patients with metabolic liver disease. When confirmed by subsequent larger studies, SS could potentially become a useful non-invasive tool in the assessment of clinically significant portal hypertension in patients with advanced fatty liver disease.

The assessment of fibrosis in chronic liver diseases using non-invasive methods is an important topic in hepatology. The aim of this study is to identify patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and advanced liver fibrosis by establishing correlations between biological/ultrasound markers and non-invasively measured liver stiffness. This study enrolled 116 patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which were evaluated clinically, biologically, and by ultrasound. Liver fibrosis was quantified by measuring liver stiffness by shear wave elastography (SWE). Multiple correlation analysis of predictors of liver fibrosis identified a number of clinical, biological, and ultrasound parameters (BMI, blood glucose, albumin, platelet count, portal vein diameter, bipolar spleen diameter) that are associated with advanced liver fibrosis in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The correlations between the degree of liver fibrosis and the risk values of some serological and ultrasound markers obtained in our study could be useful in clinical practice for the identification of advanced fibrosis in patients with NAFLD.

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