Noninvasive assessment of liver disease - measurement of hepatic fibrosis using tissue strain imaging.
The development of hepatic fibrosis in patients with liver disease is associated with an increased risk of liver cancer. Assessing the degree of hepatic fibrosis is therefore one of the most important factors in treatment planning. Liver biopsy is commonly performed to assess hepatic fibrosis, but this method is associated with complications such as hemorrhage. Recently, a number of studies on the noninvasive assessment of hepatic fibrosis have appeared in the literature. The present study was conducted to determine whether an easily performed myocardial examination technique can also be applied to the assessment of hepatic fibrosis. The statistical software Minitab, which performs hypothesis testing based on the P value, was used for statistical analysis. The mean strain values were 0.26 in the normal adult group, 0.155 in the chronic hepatitis group, and 0.058 in the cirrhosis group. Statistically significant differences were observed between the groups. The results of the present study suggest that noninvasive tissue strain imaging may become the method of choice for assessing hepatic fibrosis in routine clinical practice.
Hotta
Naoki
N
Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology, Aichi Medical University School of Medicine, Aichi-ken 480-1195, Japan. naokiki@aol.com
Ayada
Minoru
M
Okumura
Akihiko
A
Ishikawa
Tetsuya
T
Sato
Ken
K
Oohashi
Tomohiko
T
Hijikata
Yasutaka
Y
Murayama
Sayaka
S
Ido
Makoto
M
Kakumu
Shinichi
S
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001201:Ascites / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D005260:Female; D006525:Hepatitis, Viral, Human / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D008103:Liver Cirrhosis / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D018608:Ultrasonography, Doppler / Q000379:methods*