Fibroscan® and Shear Wave correlated well in hepatic fibrosis evaluation of patients with chronic liver diseases “in real life situation”

Abstract

Background: A new noninvasive medical device based on ultrasound elastography such as the Shear Wave Elastography (SWE) was designed in order to measure the liver hardness. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the correlation of the results of the liver elasticity measurements obtained by Fibroscan® (FS) and SWE for patients with chronic liver diseases. Methods: Between January and October 2017, the patients who were followed during this period of time underwent noninvasive assessments of liver fibrosis by SWE in the intercostal spaces during abdominal ultrasound procedures and/or FS. The correlation between FS and SWE was estimated and tested at a 0.05 significance level. Results: Four hundred and seventy-six patients were included in this study. The main etiologies of chronic liver disease were non alcoholic fatty disease (NAFLD), chronic viral hepatitis B (HBV) and chronic viral hepatitis C (HCV). All patients underwent a SWE and 167 among them underwent a FS procedure. The patients who were followed revealed a median FS measurement of 5.80 kpa (Q25 = 4.90 kPa; Q75 = 8 kPa) and a median SWE measurement of 7.00 kPa (Q25 = 6.10 kPa; Q75 = 8.10 kPa). We could observe a significant correlation between the FS and SWE measurements (0.49; P = .001) in the total cohort. The average absolute difference between the measurements of these 2 methods was of 2.54 kPa (sd = 3.39). There was no significant correlation for patients with NAFLD no matter whether they presented with signs of suspected non alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) or not ( R = 0.20; P = .108). All patients intending to perform the examination were able to undergo the SWE, allowing 33.3% of the patients who failed the FS to have a noninvasive evaluation of their fibrosis. Conclusion: The SWE technique proved to be as efficient as the FS one for the evaluation of the liver fibrosis in real life situation.

Prevalence of hepatic steatosis and fibrosis in Turner syndrome: A prospective case–control study

“…The potential benefit of SWE compared to Fibroscan™ in TS is that ultrasound images can assess for adenomas and vascular changes in addition to providing measurements of steatosis and fibrosis that are more specific than Fib-4 and APRI. [19][20][21] Our findings suggest that continuing annual serologic evaluation and calculating fibrosis risk scores based on serologic testing is a helpful screening tool, but given its low specificity, may not diagnose steatosis or fibrosis in a subset of TS patients. Our study also shows that GGT is more sensitive than AST or ALT in identifying early liver changes.…”

“…As a result, it is widely available, cost‐effective, and could be paired with annual serologic evaluation as a standard screening tool in patients with TS. The potential benefit of SWE compared to Fibroscan™ in TS is that ultrasound images can assess for adenomas and vascular changes in addition to providing measurements of steatosis and fibrosis that are more specific than Fib‐4 and APRI 19–21 …”

Frequency of fibrosis in patients with incidentally detected hepatosteatosis

“…This device is used to perform elastic tissue ultrasonography, which is a method that allows us to measure the elasticity of soft tissues with numerical data. This method simultaneously gives the patient’s degree of fatty liver and the degree of possible fibrosis in the liver in light of numerical data 3 .…”