Author information
1 Department of Medicine, Liver Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, 110 Francis Street, Suite 4A, Boston, MA 02215, USA. Electronic address: mlai@bidmc.harvard.edu.
2 Department of Medicine, Liver Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, 110 Francis Street, Suite 4A, Boston, MA 02215, USA.
Abstract
All chronic liver disease can lead to liver fibrosis. Assessment of the severity of liver fibrosis is central to making treatment and management decisions. Liver biopsy, the gold standard for liver fibrosis assessment, is invasive and carries risks of complications and sampling errors. The use of noninvasive elastography-based radiologic methods of liver fibrosis determination is limited to centers that have the capabilities. Laboratory liver fibrosis determinations, both general clinical scoring systems and combination biomarker panels, are accessible to a wider population of clinicians for identifying patients at low risk of advanced fibrosis who do not need liver biopsies.