Quantitative assessment of liver fibrosis in chronic viral hepatitis C patients using shear wave elastography with elastography point quantification feature

Introduction: Hepatic fibrosis is the underlying pathological condition in chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Shear wave elastography (SWE) with elastography point quantification (ElastPQ) feature is a recently developed method for measuring tissue elasticity. Aim of this study: To evaluate the diagnostic value of SWE with ElastPQ feature for the quantitative assessment of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic HCV infection. Patients and methods: This prospective study included 60 patients with chronic HCV infection and 50 healthy controls. All participants underwent imaging with ElastPQ technique for evaluation of the liver stiffness (LS). All patients underwent ultrasound guided liver biopsy. The METAVIR scores of fibrosis were illustrated. Results: The study participants included 50 controls (mean LS 3.12 ± 0.40 kPa), 5 patients with F0 score (mean LS 3.77 ± 1.44 kPa); 10 patients with F1 score (mean LS 7.50 ± 0.68 kPa), 23 patients with F2 score (mean LS 8.45 ± 0.62 kPa), 17 patients with F3 score (mean LS 9.64 ± 1.20 kPa) and 5 patients with F4 score (mean LS 12.61 ± 1.41 kPa). There was a highly significant correlation between the METAVIR scores of liver fibrosis and LS measurements assessed by ElastPQ SWE (p > 0.0001). Conclusion: The ElastPQ SWE technique appears as a reliable non-invasive tool that can provide an optimal way to monitor liver tissue stiffness in patients with chronic HCV infection with high accuracy (97.6%) in recognition of the earlier fibrosis stage (F2)