Assessment of liver fibrosis in transplant recipients with recurrent HCV infection: usefulness of transient elastography.

Digestive and liver disease : official journal of the Italian Society of Gastroenterology and the Italian Association for the Study of the Liver

Corradi F, Piscaglia F, Flori S, D'Errico-Grigioni A, Vasuri F, Tamé MR, Andreone P, Boni P, Gianstefani A, Bolondi L

2009 Dig Liver Dis Volume 41 Issue 3

PubMed 18672413 DOI 10.1016/j.dld.2008.06.009

BACKGROUND

Progression of recurrent hepatitis C is accelerated in liver transplant recipients, leading to special need of non-invasive validated methods to estimate liver fibrosis.

AIM

To assess the efficacy of liver stiffness measurement by transient elastography (Fibroscan) and serum parameters in predicting fibrosis stage in HCV-infected transplant recipients.

METHODS

The correlation between liver fibrosis, assessed at liver histology on bioptic specimens obtained for clinical indications, and stiffness or clinico-serological indexes (Benlloch, APRI, Forns, Fibrotest and Doppler resistance index), was investigated in transplant recipients with recurrence of HCV chronic hepatitis. A total of 56 patients (of which 36 with all clinico-serological indexes), presenting with the following METAVIR fibrosis stage F1=38, F2=9, F3=8, F4=1, were enrolled in the study population. Differences between fibrosis stages were calculated by non-parametric analysis. The best cut-off for identifying significant fibrosis (F2-F4) was assessed by ROC curve analysis.

RESULTS

Stiffness (median and range) was 7.7 KPa (range 4.2-13.9) in F1 and 17.0KPa (range 6.8-36.3) in >or=F2 (p<0.001). A stiffness cut-off of 10.1 KPa revealed 94% Sensitivity, 89% Specificity, 81% PPV and 94% NPV in differentiating F1 from F2-F4. The area under the receiver operator curve in the assessment of fibrosis was significantly higher for Liver stiffness (AUROC 0.943) than for any of the other non-invasive indexes (AUROCs ranging 0.591-0.815).

CONCLUSIONS

Transient elastography of the liver provides good accuracy in identifying patients with significant fibrosis and performs better than non-invasive indexes based on clinico-serological parameters in transplant recipients.

Citation Reference:
Corradi F, Piscaglia F, Flori S, D'Errico-Grigioni A, Vasuri F, Tamé MR, Andreone P, Boni P, Gianstefani A, Bolondi L. Assessment of liver fibrosis in transplant recipients with recurrent HCV infection: usefulness of transient elastography. Dig Liver Dis 2009;41:3.