Liver biopsy for parenchymal liver disease - is routine real time image guidance unnecessary?
Liver biopsy even today remains the standard of care for grading and staging chronic hepatitis despite advances in noninvasive markers of liver fibrosis. Literature suggests an expanding role for real-time image guided liver biopsy and declining trend for blind liver biopsies. In our center, where we perform around 400 liver biopsies per year, we performed a prospective clinical audit of our practice of blind outpatient percutaneous liver biopsies. Patients requiring histological grading and staging of chronic hepatitis routinely undergo blind outpatient percutaneous liver biopsies in our endoscopy unit unless there is a definite indication for real-time image guidance. All procedures were assessed for safety, and all specimens were evaluated by a specimen quality grading score for adequacy for grading and staging of chronic hepatitis. Of the 446 patients referred for histological grading and staging of chronic hepatitis C by liver biopsy, only 42 patients (9.5 %) required real-time ultrasound for liver biopsy. The remaining 404 patients underwent blind outpatient percutaneous liver biopsies which were found to be extremely safe with no major complications, yielding adequate liver tissue with high specimen quality score allowing optimal grading and staging of chronic hepatitis.
Department of Gastroenterology, Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, Qatar, aniljohn44@gmail.com.
Anil
A
John
Saad
S
Al Kaabi
Madiha Emran
ME
Soofi
Muneera
M
Mohannadi
Salva Manam
SM
Kandath
Moataz
M
Derbala
Rafie
R
Yakoub
Esra Mohammed
EM
Al-Ahdal
Manik
M
Sharma
Hamid
H
Wani
Nazeeh
N
Dweik
Anjum
A
John
Mohammed Tariq
MT
Butt
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D019698:Hepatitis C, Chronic / Q000473:pathology; D006521:Hepatitis, Chronic / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D061705:Image-Guided Biopsy / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008099:Liver / Q000473:pathology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012449:Safety; D012720:Severity of Illness Index