Laparoscopy and liver biopsy: further evidence that the two procedures improve the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis. A retrospective study of 1,003 consecutive examinations.

We examined retrospectively 1,003 patients with chronic liver disease who underwent laparoscopy and liver biopsy. The diagnosis of cirrhosis was made in 411 patients and excluded in 570; in the remaining 22 patients, the laparoscopic/histologic diagnosis was inconclusive. When the two techniques were considered separately, a final diagnosis of cirrhosis was possible in 78.4% by laparoscopy and in 78.8% by biopsy of the total of 411 cases, whereas, doing both procedures improved the diagnostic yield to 97.7% by decreasing the percentage of false negatives for each technique. Laparoscopy can also provide important additional information by detecting intrabdominal signs of portal hypertension and so improve the macroscopic diagnosis of cirrhosis. In particular, splenomegaly seen at laparoscopy seems to be an important feature for the diagnosis and evaluation of chronic liver disease.