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Transient elastography with a new probe for obese patients for non-invasive staging of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis

  • Hepatobiliary-Pancreas
  • Published:
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Abstract

Objective

Transient elastography (TE) has shown promising results for the staging of liver fibrosis in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and steatohepatitis (NASH) with the limitation that 25% of obese patients cannot be examined with the standard TE probe. The aim of this study was to evaluate a new XL probe for obese patients for the staging of liver fibrosis in NAFLD/NASH.

Methods

Fifty patients with NAFLD/NASH and histological assessment of liver fibrosis were included in the study. All patients received TE with the standard probe (M probe) and the new XL probe, and the results were compared with liver histology.

Results

The diagnostic accuracy expressed as the area under the ROC curve for TE measurements with the M probe and the XL probe was 0.80 and 0.82 for the diagnosis of significant fibrosis, and 0.91 and 0.95 for the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis, respectively. Eighty-three percent of the patients who could not be measured with the M probe could be measured using the XL probe.

Conclusion

Transient elastography using the XL probe for obese patients can be performed with comparable diagnostic accuracy to the standard probe and enables the examination of significantly more obese patients.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Céline Fournier and other staff members of Echosens International (Paris, France) for the loan of the XL prototype probe for this study. No financial support was obtained for this study. In addition, the authors are indebted to Dr. Hanns Ackermann for providing us with easy-to-use software for the specific statistical analysis of this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Internal Medicine 1, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Hospital, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60590, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Mireen Friedrich-Rust, Hassan Hadji-Hosseini, Ishani Sircar, Annika Kau, Stefan Zeuzem & Joerg Bojunga

  2. Institute of Pathology, J.W. Goethe University Hospital, Frankfurt, Germany

    Susanne Kriener

  3. Institute of Biostatistics and Mathematical Modelling, Faculty of Medicine, J.W. Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany

    Eva Herrmann

Authors
  1. Mireen Friedrich-Rust
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  2. Hassan Hadji-Hosseini
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  3. Susanne Kriener
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  4. Eva Herrmann
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  5. Ishani Sircar
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  6. Annika Kau
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  7. Stefan Zeuzem
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  8. Joerg Bojunga
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Correspondence to Mireen Friedrich-Rust.

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Friedrich-Rust, M., Hadji-Hosseini, H., Kriener, S. et al. Transient elastography with a new probe for obese patients for non-invasive staging of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis. Eur Radiol 20, 2390–2396 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-010-1820-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00330-010-1820-9

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