Liver Stiffness Measurements in Patients with Different Stages of Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease: Diagnostic Performance and Clinicopathological Correlation

The present study evaluated performance characteristics of liver stiffness measurement (LSM) by FibroScan in patients with different stages of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

A total of 307 subjects (120 NAFLD, 85 NAFLD related cirrhosis, and 102 healthy controls) were studied.

In NAFLD patients, LSM had significant correlation with fibrosis (r = 0.68, p < 0.001), and increased progressively with increasing fibrosis (p < 0.001). However, the difference between stage 1 and stage 2 fibrosis was not significant (p = 0.07). The LSM in NAFLD without fibrosis and healthy controls was similar (p = 0.37). The areas under receiver-operating characteristics (AUROC) curve of LSM for stages ≥1, ≥2, ≥3, and 4 were 0.82, 0.85, 0.94, and 0.96, respectively. The best LSM (kPa) cut-offs for fibrosis stages ≥1, ≥2, ≥3 and 4 were 6.1, 7.0, 9.0, and 11.8, respectively. The negative predictive value of LSM for excluding advanced fibrosis was 95 %. For advanced fibrosis, the AUROC curve of LSM was 0.94, followed by FIB-4 (0.75), BARD score (0.68), NAFLD fibrosis score (0.66), and aspartate platelet ratio index (0.60). In multivariate analysis, LSM was the only independent predictor of advanced fibrosis (odds ratio 1.47). In patients with NAFLD cirrhosis, LSM correlated significantly with Child-Pugh score (r = 0.40, p < 0.001), serum bilirubin (r = 0.34, p = 0.02), and grades of esophageal varices (r = 0.23, p = 0.04).

LSM is a useful tool for evaluation of patients with NAFLD, and is the best among other non-invasive predictors of liver fibrosis.