Transient elastography with a new probe for obese patients for non-invasive staging of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.
OBJECTIVE
Transient elastography (TE) has shown promising results for the staging of liver fibrosis in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and steatohepatitis (NASH) with the limitation that 25% of obese patients cannot be examined with the standard TE probe. The aim of this study was to evaluate a new XL probe for obese patients for the staging of liver fibrosis in NAFLD/NASH.


METHODS
Fifty patients with NAFLD/NASH and histological assessment of liver fibrosis were included in the study. All patients received TE with the standard probe (M probe) and the new XL probe, and the results were compared with liver histology.


RESULTS
The diagnostic accuracy expressed as the area under the ROC curve for TE measurements with the M probe and the XL probe was 0.80 and 0.82 for the diagnosis of significant fibrosis, and 0.91 and 0.95 for the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis, respectively. Eighty-three percent of the patients who could not be measured with the M probe could be measured using the XL probe.


CONCLUSIONS
Transient elastography using the XL probe for obese patients can be performed with comparable diagnostic accuracy to the standard probe and enables the examination of significantly more obese patients.
Department of Internal Medicine 1, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Hospital, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60590, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Mireen.Friedrich-Rust@kgu.de
Mireen
M
Friedrich-Rust
Hassan
H
Hadji-Hosseini
Susanne
S
Kriener
Eva
E
Herrmann
Ishani
I
Sircar
Annika
A
Kau
Stefan
S
Zeuzem
Joerg
J
Bojunga
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001706:Biopsy; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging; D054459:Elasticity Imaging Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D005234:Fatty Liver / Q000150:complications* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D005355:Fibrosis; D006801:Humans; D008099:Liver / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009765:Obesity / Q000150:complications*; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity