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Evaluation of Liver Stiffness After Radioembolization by Real-Time ShearWave™ Elastography: Preliminary Study

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Abstract

Purpose

To evaluate the effect of ShearWave™ elastography (SWE) for the assessment of liver fibrosis after radioembolization (RE) in patients with liver malignancies.

Materials and Methods

We prospectively examined the effects of SWE before and after RE in 17 adult patients, from June 2012 to September 2013. All patients underwent SWE within 1 month before and 3 months (96.3 ± 22.9 days) after RE. Measurements were taken in segments III, IV, V, and VI (lateral/medial left lobe and anterior/posterior right lobe, respectively). Liver stiffness was studied in the 39 treated segments.

Results

The mean stiffness of liver tissue according to the pre-RE SWE measurements was not different from the post-RE SWE measurements in the segments that did not undergo RE. Conversely, segments treated with RE were significantly stiffer according to the post-RE SWE measurements (mean SWE 17.4 kPa) than according to the baseline measurements (7.0 kPa) (p < 0.001). Patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and preexisting infection with hepatitis B and C viruses had higher pre-embolization stiffness, and the post-embolization stiffness of the treated segments in these patients was higher than that in the remainder of the study population.

Conclusion

These data suggest that SWE measurements of liver stiffness increase as early as the third month after RE. SWE could be used as a noninvasive complementary imaging method for preliminary assessment of liver fibrosis before and after RE.

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Acknowledgments

The authors have no relevant financial interest in this article

Conflict of interest

Authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Statement of Human and Animal Rights

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Correspondence to Ahmet Bas.

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Bas, A., Samanci, C., Gulsen, F. et al. Evaluation of Liver Stiffness After Radioembolization by Real-Time ShearWave™ Elastography: Preliminary Study. Cardiovasc Intervent Radiol 38, 957–963 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00270-014-1021-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00270-014-1021-z

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