Primary Care Screening for Fatty Liver Disease Debated

Medscape Conference Coverage from

The Liver Meeting 2017: American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD)

Primary Care Screening for Fatty Liver Disease Debated
Damian McNamara
October 23, 2017

"We are well aware that more than 50% of patients with fatty livers have normal ATL values," he pointed out. And interoperator variability and "poor predictive ability for diagnosis of fibrosis and steatosis" limit the utility of ultrasonography, which is also commonly used to evaluate patients for liver disease. Liver biopsies are more accurate, but they are invasive, he added.

For their study, Dr Hassanein and his colleagues implemented a 16-week transient elastography screening program at a primary care clinic in Chula Vista, California. They offered screening to 1298 consecutive patients, and ended up with 958 evaluable scans.

Operators used a hand-held FibroScan probe, from Echosens, to assess liver stiffness, an indication of fibrosis, and a controlled attenuation parameter (CAP) score to detect steatosis.

Read the article (LINK)