Introduction:

The medical record and liver biochemical profile are essential in diagnosing liver diseases. Liver biopsy is the reference parameter for diagnosis, activity evaluation, fibrosis status, or therapeutic response, but it is invasive and carries risks. For fibrosis staging, easily accessible non-invasive tests without resorting to biopsy have been developed. The FIB-4 and APRI indexes are helpful but do not determine the degree of fibrosis in the early and intermediate stages. Fibrosis can be evaluated using elastography, a sensitive technique to differentiate patients without fibrosis from those with advanced fibrosis.

Objective:

To describe the diagnostic performance of FibroScan in detecting fibrosis compared to the APRI and FIB-4 indexes versus the biopsy in a care center for patients with liver diseases in Bogotá.

Methods:

A retrospective, cross-sectional cohort study compared the APRI, FIB-4, and Fibroscan with biopsy; diagnostic accuracy measures and an area under the curve (AUROC) analysis were described.

Results:

The biopsy was positive for fibrosis in 40%. The AUROC was 0.90 (confidence interval [CI]: 0.83-0.97) for FibroScan, 0.52 (CI: 0.35-0.68) for APRI, and 0.52 (CI: 0.37-0.68) for FIB-4.

Conclusions:

FibroScan helps diagnose and monitor chronic liver disease and should be combined with other tests and the clinical picture. FibroScan was better at detecting advanced stages when discriminating against patients with liver fibrosis than the APRI and FIB-4 indexes.

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