Department of Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Medical Physics, Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Vilnius University, LT-01513 Vilnius, Lithuania.
Department of Radiology, Medical Academy, Lithuanian University of Health Science Kauno Klinikos, LT-44307 Kaunas, Lithuania.
Medicina (Kaunas). 2023 Feb 28;59(3):479. doi: 10.3390/medicina59030479.
Many quantitative imaging modalities are available that quantify chronic liver disease, although only a few of them are included in clinical guidelines. Many more imaging options are still competing to find their place in the area of diagnosing chronic liver disease. We report our first prospective single-center study evaluating different imaging modalities that stratify viral hepatitis-associated liver fibrosis in a treatment-naïve patient group. The aim of our study is to compare and to combine already employed 2D shear wave elastography (2D-SWE) with dynamic liver scintigraphy with 99mTc-mebrofenin in chronic viral hepatitis patients for the staging of liver fibrosis. Seventy-two patients were enrolled in the study. We found that both 2D-SWE ultrasound imaging, with dynamic liver scintigraphy with 99mTc-mebrofenin are able to stratify CLD patients into different liver fibrosis categories based on histological examination findings. We did not find any statistically significant difference between these imaging options, which means that dynamic liver scintigraphy with 99mTc-mebrofenin is not an inferior imaging technique. A combination of these imaging modalities showed increased accuracy in the non-invasive staging of liver cirrhosis. Our study presents that 2D-SWE and dynamic liver scintigraphy with 99mTc-mebrofenin could be used for staging liver fibrosis, both in singular application and in a combined way, adding a potential supplementary value that represents different aspects of liver fibrosis in CLD.
许多定量成像方式可用于量化慢性肝病，尽管其中只有少数几种被纳入临床指南。更多的成像选择仍在竞争，以在诊断慢性肝病领域找到自己的位置。我们报告了第一项前瞻性单中心研究，评估了不同的成像方式，这些方式可对未经治疗的患者组中的病毒性肝炎相关肝纤维化进行分层。我们研究的目的是比较并结合已经使用的二维剪切波弹性成像（2D-SWE）与 99mTc-美罗芬酸动态肝脏闪烁显像，以对慢性病毒性肝炎患者的肝纤维化进行分期。72 名患者入组本研究。我们发现，2D-SWE 超声成像与 99mTc-美罗芬酸动态肝脏闪烁显像均能够根据组织学检查结果将 CLD 患者分层为不同的肝纤维化类别。我们没有发现这些成像方式之间存在任何统计学上的显著差异，这意味着 99mTc-美罗芬酸动态肝脏闪烁显像并不是一种较差的成像技术。这些成像方式的组合显示出在肝硬化的非侵入性分期中具有更高的准确性。我们的研究表明，2D-SWE 和 99mTc-美罗芬酸动态肝脏闪烁显像可用于肝纤维化分期，无论是单独应用还是联合应用，都增加了一种潜在的补充价值，代表了 CLD 中肝纤维化的不同方面。
