Laparoscopic liver biopsy to evaluate hepatic dysfunction in patients with hematologic malignancies: a useful tool to effect changes in management.

Hepatic dysfunction is common in patients who receive intensive chemotherapy and it is important to determine the etiology in order to institute appropriate therapy. The role of laparoscopic liver biopsy in patients with neutropenia, thrombocytopenia, or both was evaluated as a mean of making treatment decisions and as a determinant of clinical outcome. Laparoscopic liver biopsy was performed in 29 subjects who were receiving intensive cytotoxic therapy with or without bone marrow transplantation. One to three direct-vision laparoscopic liver biopsies were performed in each patient using a Tru-cut needle during general anesthesia. Platelet concentrate transfusions were usually given before, during, and immediately after biopsy. Bleeding was controlled with spatula electrocautery. Thirty-two biopsies were obtained in 29 patients. At the time of liver biopsy, white blood cell and platelet counts ranged from 0 to 14,300/microliters (median: 2500/microliters), and 1000 to 47,000/microliters (median: 20,000/microliters), respectively. Bleeding at the liver biopsy site was readily controlled during the procedure without clinical evidence of significant bleeding; no procedure-related complications were noted and no patients required re-exploration. All biopsies were informative and the lesions observed in 32 biopsies revealed graft-versus-host disease (n = 5), hepatic candidiasis (n =1), hepatic veno-occlusive disease (n = 3), cholestasis (n = 19), hemosiderosis (n = 26), toxic injury (n = 8), hepatic steatosis (n = 4), granuloma (n = 1), viral infection (n =1), and malignancy (n = 1). Laparoscopic liver biopsy has been proven to be an effective means of assessing the cause of liver dysfunction in patients who were thrombocytopenic and immunosuppressed. The diagnosis obtained at laparoscopic liver biopsy altered therapy in nine of 29 (31%) patients.