Supersonic Shear Imaging Is a Fast, Reliable Method for Noninvasive Liver Fibrosis Staging: Presented at AASLD

By Cheryl Lathrop

BOSTON -- November 5, 2010 -- Supersonic shear imaging (SSI) appears to be a fast, simple, and reliable method for noninvasive liver fibrosis staging and shows better discrimination than one-dimensional transient elastography for each fibrosis stage, researchers said here at the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).

Eric Bavu, MD, INSERM, and Langevin Institute, Paris, France, and colleagues reported the findings here on November 1.

The study included 113 patients with hepatitis C virus. Patients underwent both SSI one-dimensional transient elastography. Of these, 108 patients had results that were relevant and that were included in the final analysis.

Hepatic fibrosis was determined retrospectively on the basis of liver biopsy, on clinical history, and on 3 noninvasive biomarkers gathered the day of the imaging, aspartate to platelets ratio index, and Forn's Index.

The researchers assessed a comparison between the performances of SSI and one-dimensional transient elastography using receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves analysis and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis between the assessed elasticity value and the fibrosis stage.

There was a better correlation between fibrosis staging and elasticity measurements with SSI (p ~10-16) than with one-dimensional transient elastography (p ~10-15).

The areas under the ROC curves for stiffness values assessed by SSI were 0.948 for fibrosis staging >=2; 0.962 for staging >=3; and 0.968 for staging =4. In comparison, with one-dimensional transient elastography, the values were 0.846 for >=2, 0.857 for >=3, and 0.940 for =4, respectively.

The comparisons between SSI and one-dimensional transient elastography were particularly significant for mild (F0-F1; P =.005) and moderate (F2; P =.001) fibrosis.

"SSI is a fair method to evaluate patients with chronic liver disease, and determine those to treat and those not to treat," said Dr. Bavu.

[Presentation title: A New Potent Morphological Non-Invasive Predictor of Liver Fibrosis Staging by Supersonic Shear Imaging. Abstract 1327]

Source