Shear Wave Elastography in Assessment of Liver Fibrosis

Abstract

Abstract Background Liver fibrosis is major medical issues in patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC). It may lead to cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and liver-related death. Therefore, assessing the degree of fibrosis in patients with chronic liver diseases, especially before the advanced stage, is clinically important to allow early care and prevent fatal liver disease. Objective The plan was to do shear-wave Elastography after fibroscan (TE) in order to assess the stiffness of the liver, detect the changes occurred in hepatitis C patients and measure diagnostic accuracy of 2D- SWE by using TE as reference standard. Methods A cross-section study included 30 persons with positive hepatitis C. They were referred to Radiology department at National Hepatology and tropical medicine research institute. Results Our study included (30) patients who have hepatitis C positive, their ages ranged from (18) years old to (60) years old with mean SD of 52.97 ± 9.43. They were 17 females (56.7%) and 13 males (43.3%). Different liver fibrosis stages were observed by 2D-SWE as following: (FO) 4 patients (13.3%), (Fl) 4 patients (13.3%), (F2) 9 patients (30.0%), (F3) 10 patients (33.3%), (F4) 3 patients (10.0%). While TE (fibroscan) shows (FO) 6 (20.0%), (Fl) 3 patients (10.0%), (F2) 7 patients (23.3%), (F3) 8 patients (26.7%) (F4) 6 patients (20.0%). Our study showed that the relation between TE (fibroscan) and SWE finding had positive correlation of most patients with liver fibrosis with (p-value 0.006 and r-value 0.487). Because the impoltant of significant fibrosis for initiate antiviral protocol therapy, 30 patients classified into FO—FI (non-significant liver fibrosis) versus F2—F4 (significant liver fibrosis). Our study show significant discrimination was found between no/mild fibrosis (FO-FI) and significant fibrosis (F2-F4), shows the sensitivity of SWE in detection of significant fibrosis results is 95.2% and the specificity is 77.8%, PPV 90.91 %, NPV 87.5% and the accuracy 90.0% with cutoff value >5.7kPa. Conclusion SD-SWE is accurate in prediction significant fibrosis (2F2), Thus is expected to overcome the limitation of TE as a reliable method to assess fibrosis induce by hepatitis.