title: The Diagnostic Value of FibroScan in Assessing Significant Liver Fibrosis in Patients with Chronic Hepatitis B.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Significant liver fibrosis is recognized as the key link of therapy and prognosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B infection (CHB). The present study is designed to estimate the benefits of FibroScan (FS) in diagnosing significant fibrosis in patients with CHB.
  
  
  METHODS
  Two hundred and eight consecutive CHB patients, who underwent liver biopsy, FS and laboratory tests, were recruited. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated to assess the performance of non-invasive models.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Liver stiffness measurement (LSM) and aspartate transaminase (AST) to platelet (PLT) ratio index (APRI), but not age-platelet index (API) or AST to alanine aminotransferase (ALT) ratio (AAR), were closely correlated with significant fibrosis; areas under ROC curves (AUROC) were 0.817 (p< 0.001), 0.705 (p= 0.003), 0.626 (p= 0.065) and 0.631 (p= 0.055), respectively. When combining LSM with APRI, the AUROC was 0.813,p< 0.001.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  FibroScan can predict the presence of significant liver fibrosis, so as to avoid liver biopsy. It seems that the combination of FS and APRI does not significantly improve the ability to predict significant fibrosis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Oncology, University Hospital of Hubei University for Nationalities, Enshi, China.|The Chongqing Key Laboratory for Research of Infectious Diseases, Chongqing, China.|Institute for Infectious Diseases, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: X
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.affiliation: The Chongqing Key Laboratory for Research of Infectious Diseases, Chongqing, China.|Institute for Infectious Diseases, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: The Chongqing Key Laboratory for Research of Infectious Diseases, Chongqing, China.|Institute for Infectious Diseases, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: The Chongqing Key Laboratory for Research of Infectious Diseases, Chongqing, China.|Institute for Infectious Diseases, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: The Chongqing Key Laboratory for Research of Infectious Diseases, Chongqing, China.|Institute for Infectious Diseases, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: The Chongqing Key Laboratory for Research of Infectious Diseases, Chongqing, China.|Institute for Infectious Diseases, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: The Chongqing Key Laboratory for Research of Infectious Diseases, Chongqing, China.|Institute for Infectious Diseases, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Xiang
authors.affiliation: The Chongqing Key Laboratory for Research of Infectious Diseases, Chongqing, China.|Institute for Infectious Diseases, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing, China. E-mail: wym417@163.com.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
keywords: Chronic hepatitis B; FibroScan; liver biopsy; liver stiffness measurement; non-invasive; significant liver fibrosis