Open AccessUltrasound is highly specific in diagnosing compensated cirrhosis in chronic hepatitis C patients in real world clinical practice
Author(s) -
YiHao Yen,
FangYing Kuo,
Chien–Hung Chen,
Tsung–Hui Hu,
ShengNan Lu,
JingHoung Wang,
ChaoHung Hung
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.59
H-Index - 148
eISSN - 1536-5964
pISSN - 0025-7974
DOI - 10.1097/md.0000000000016270
Subject(s) - medicine , cirrhosis , ultrasound , liver biopsy , gastroenterology , retrospective cohort study , cohort , hepatitis c , receiver operating characteristic , radiology , biopsy
Ultrasound is routinely used during the evaluation of liver cirrhosis. Inter-observer variability is considered a major drawback. This retrospective study investigated the accuracy of ultrasound in diagnosing compensated cirrhosis (i.e., modified Knodell F3, F4) in chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients in real world clinical practice. Consecutive treatment-naive CHC patients who underwent liver biopsy (LB) prior to interferon therapy from 1997 to 2010 were enrolled. Ultrasound was performed by 30 hepatologists prior to LB. Ultrasound-identified cirrhosis was defined as small liver size, nodular liver surface and coarse liver parenchyma. LB was used as a reference, and the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasound was assessed and compared. Fibrosis was scored according to the modified Knodell classification. A cohort comprising 1738 patients, including 922 men and 816 women with a mean age of 52.5 years, was analyzed in the present study. The distribution of the patients’ modified Knodell scores was F0 = 336, F1 = 489, F2 = 165, F3 = 315, F4 = 433. Ultrasound-identified cirrhosis was noted in 283 patients. Using ultrasound-identified cirrhosis to predict compensated cirrhosis, the sensitivity was 34.0%, the specificity was 97.1%, the positive predictive value was 89.8%, the negative predictive value was 66.1%, the positive likelihood ratio was 11.6, and the negative likelihood ratio was 0.68. The area under the ROC curve (AUROC) was 0.66. Despite being affected by inter-observer variability, ultrasound is highly specific in diagnosing compensated cirrhosis in CHC patients in real world clinical practice. However, the sensitivity is low.