Limitations and significance of non-invasive test for assessment of chronic liver disease

Abstract

The gold standard for assessing liver fibrosis is a liver biopsy. However, the procedure is invasive and is associated with pain and sometimes fatal consequences. The accuracy of liver biopsy results is further harmed by intra- and inter-observer variability. Small samples only. This muddles the two types of observer variability discussed above. Due to these limitations, non-invasive approaches for fibrosis testing have been developed. Various biochemical serum indicators or imaging techniques that provide a physical measure of hepatic stiffness are non-invasive approaches for assessing liver fibrosis.

Keywords

• liver stiffness assessment
• transient elastography
• magnetic resonance elastography
• fibrotest
• chronic liver disease
• chronic hepatitis b
• cirrhosis
• aspartate aminotransferase-to-platelet ratio index