Noninvasive Assessment of Steatosis and Fibrosis in Alcoholic Liver Disease

Pp: 275-284 (10)

Abstract

Alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) is the most frequent cause of severe chronic liver disease in Europe and worldwide. The diagnosis of ALD is usually suspected when there is the documentation of regular alcohol consumption of >20 g/day in females and >30 g/day in males and in the presence of clinical and/or biological abnormalities suggestive of liver injury. Non-invasive methods of evaluation in chronic liver diseases, including ALD, gain a lot of interest in the last years due to the large number of studies that have proven their usefulness and accuracy and due to the easy acceptability by patients, even that liver biopsy is still considered the gold standard method of evaluation. In ALD non-invasive techniques are available for the evaluation both of steatosis and fibrosis, including biological tests, ultrasound, attenuation imaging, elastography. Most noninvasive techniques allow a prediction of steatosis and advanced liver fibrosis with good accuracy, allowing also the dynamic follow up in these patients.

Keywords: Alcohol-related liver disease, Biological tests, Liver elastography, Liver fibrosis, Liver steatosis, Noninvasive assessment.

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