Yasser A. Elhosary¹, Saleh M. Saleh², Wafaa M. Ezzat^1*, Dirk-André Clevert<sup>3

1</sup>Department of Internal Medicine, National Research Center, Cairo, Egypt; ²Department of Internal Medicine, National Liver Institute, Menoufia, Egypt; ³Department of Clinical Radiology, Munich University Hospital, Munich, Germany

BACKGROUND: Acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) evaluates liver stiffness non-invasively and was invented recently. This technique can easily and accurately assess the degree of liver fibrosis in clinical practice.

AIM: The aim of this study was to detect the diagnostic performance of ARFI elastography in the staging of fibrosis in some Egyptian patients with chronic HCV infection.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: One hundred ninety patients with chronic HCV infection; 142 men and 48 women were enrolled in the study. They underwent liver biopsy examination for liver fibrosis detection. All demographic; clinical and biochemical data were recoded. ARFI examination was done for all subjects to detect liver stiffness measurement in relation to liver fibrosis detected by pathological examination of liver biopsies.

RESULTS: Medians of liver stiffness measurement by shear wave velocity showed a significant increase as a grade of liver fibrosis increases (p ≤ 0.0001, highly significant). Liver stiffness was directly correlated to age, AST; ALT; INR and liver steatosis (p values were: 0.009; 0.0001; 0.013; 0.006 and 0.04 respectively, significant). On the other hand, liver stiffness was inversely correlated to albumin; prothrombin concentration and platelets (p values were: 0.0001; 0.001, and 0.0001, respectively, significant). We found that shear wave velocity can predict F1; F2; F3 and F4 at cut-off values: 1.22; 1.32; 1.44 and 1.8 respectively.

CONCLUSION: ARFI is a diagnostic noninvasive promising technique for liver fibrosis diagnosis among Egyptian patients with chronic HCV infection.
 

Citation: Elhosary YA, Saleh SM, Ezzat WM, Clevert D-A. Diagnostic Accuracy of Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (ARFI) in Diagnosis of Liver Fibrosis among Egyptian Patients with Chronic HCV Infection. Open Access Maced J Med Sci. http://dx.doi.org/10.3889/oamjms.2016.064
Keywords: HCV; ARFI; liver fibrosis; diagnostic accuracy.
*Correspondence: Dr. Wafaa M Ezzat. National Research Center, Internal Medicine, Elbohoos st., Cairo 12311, Egypt. E-Mail: wafaa_3t@yahoo.com
Received: 21-Apr-2016; Revised: 14-May-2016; Accepted: 15-May-2016; Online first: 08-Jun-2016
Copyright: © 2016 Yasser A. Elhosary, Saleh M. Saleh, Wafaa M. Ezzat, Dirk-André Clevert.   This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

List of abbreviations: ARFI: Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse; HCV: hepatitis C virus infection; AST: aspartate transaminase; ALT: alanine transaminase; INR: international normalized ratio; TE: Transient elastography; RTE: real-time elastography; ROI: region of interest; AUROC: area under receiving operating curve
 

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