[Prognosis assessment of alcoholic liver disease: how and why?].

Presse medicale (Paris, France : 1983)

Trabut JB, Thépot V, Terris B, Sogni P, Nalpas B, Pol S

2014 Presse Med Volume 43 Issue 2

PubMed 24140195 DOI 10.1016/j.lpm.2013.04.016

Alcoholic liver disease (ALD) causes more than 5000 deaths per year in France. Most of those deaths could be prevented by an early diagnosis, which would give the patients the opportunity to modify their alcohol consumption while liver lesions are still reversible. Hepatic histology is the main parameter that predicts morbidity and mortality in patients with ALD. Non-invasive methods such as biomarker tests (e.g. FibroTest(®) or FibroMetre A(®)) or hepatic elastography (FibroScan(®)) may allow diagnosing alcohol-induced liver lesion without systematic biopsy. Despite promising preliminary results, those methods are not validated yet in ALD. A validation of non-invasive methods for ALD could allow a large screening of the severe forms of this pathology.

Citation Reference:
Trabut JB, Thépot V, Terris B, Sogni P, Nalpas B, Pol S. [Prognosis assessment of alcoholic liver disease: how and why?]. Presse Med 2014;43:2.