Correlation of liver parenchymal gadolinium-ethoxybenzyl diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid enhancement and liver function in humans with hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Abstract. Animal studies have demonstrated that liver function parameters affect the degree of liver enhancement by gadolinium-ethoxybenzyl diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (Gd-EOB-DTPA). The present study prospectively investigated whether liver function parameters and liver damage scores similarly correlate with the degree of liver enhancement by Gd-EOB-DTPA in humans with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). A total of 41 patients (32 males, 9 females; mean age, 71.9 years; range, 38-86 years) with suspected HCC provided written, informed consent to undergo a Gd-EOB-DTPA (30 µmol/kg of body weight)-enhanced T1-gradient-echo (GRE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study. The signal intensity of the liver parenchyma was quantified at various time points following injection of Gd-EOB-DTPA. We investigated the correlations between maximal relative enhancement (RE) values and liver function parameters, and liver damage scores. Correlations between parameters and maximum RE values were determined using the Student's t-test and univariate regression analyses. The effect of potential confounding factors was controlled by multiple stepwise regression analysis. Two-tailed values of p<0.05 were considered to indicate a statistically significant difference. The RE values were maximal in 8 and 33 patients at 20 and 30 min, respectively, following Gd-EOB-DTPA injection and did not significantly differ between respective liver damage scores. Univariate analyses revealed that maximal RE values were associated with serum aspartate aminotransferase, total bilirubin, albumin and 15-min indocyanine green retention rates. Multiple stepwise regression analyses revealed that serum albumin and total bilirubin remained independently significant. The degree of liver parenchyma enhancement by Gd-EOB-DTPA depends on liver function parameters in humans, as in animals. The results from this study suggest that Gd-EOB-DTPA has potential for use as a liver function test, and for providing a short examination time for liver MRI results in patients with normal liver function.

Gd-EOB-DTPA-enhanced MRI for evaluation of liver function: Comparison between signal-intensity-based indices and T1 relaxometry

“…(0.520; p < 0.001)12, and Kubota et al . (r = 0.462; p = 0.003)34. In this context, a few studies compared liver function as expressed by different clinical scoring systems (model for endstage liver disease (MELD) Score, Child- Pugh Score) with RE of the liver after Gd-EOB-DTPA administration and showed strong correlation between RE and liver function13141535.…”

Surveillance and Diagnostic Algorithm for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Proposed by the Liver Cancer Study Group of Japan: 2014 Update

“…It has actually become common to encounter cases where hypervascular HCC or nodule-in-nodule HCC that is undetectable by MDCT is detected in a routine screening by EOB-MRI because of early enhancement in the arterial phase or clear hypointensity in the hepatobiliary phase [11,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,100,101,102,103]. Furthermore, studies comparing the diagnostic performance of EOB-MRI and MDCT for hypervascular HCC have shown that EOB-MRI is superior or, at the very l...…”

Transient severe motion during arterial phase in patients with Gadoxetic acid administration: Can a five hepatic arterial subphases technique mitigate the artifact?

“…Its advantage lies on the addition of offering hepatobiliary phase (HBP) imaging (8). After intravenous injection, Gd-EOB-DTPA is gradually taken up by functional hepatocyte and eventually excreted via biliary and renal system (9,10).…”