Transient elastography for predicting esophageal/gastric varices in children with biliary atresia

BMC Gastroenterology

Research Article

Yong Poovorawan¹  Voranush Chongsrisawat¹  Nipaporn Siripon¹  Paisarn Vejapipat² 

[1] Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand;Department of Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand;

关键词: Transient elastography;    esophageal varices;    gastric varices;    biliary atresia;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-230X-11-41

 received in 2011-01-13, accepted in 2011-04-18,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundTransient elastography (TE) is an innovative, noninvasive technique to assess liver fibrosis by measuring liver stiffness in patients with chronic liver diseases. The purpose of this study has been to explore the accuracy of TE and clinical parameters in predicting the presence of esophageal/gastric varices in children with biliary atresia (BA) following portoenterostomy.MethodsPatients with BA status post portoenterostomy and normal children were recruited. Splenomegaly and presence of EV/GV were determined by physical examination and endoscopy, respectively. Aspartate transaminase to platelet ratio index (APRI) was used as a serum fibrosis marker. TE was performed by using FibroScan. Data was expressed as mean ± SD.ResultsSeventy-three BA patients (male:female = 32:41; age 9.11 ± 5.64 years) and 50 normal controls (male:female = 19:31; age 11.00 ± 3.31 years) were enrolled. The liver stiffness score of BA patients was significantly higher than that of normal controls (27.37 ± 22.48 and 4.69 ± 1.03 kPa; p < 0.001). Patients with EV/GV had significantly higher liver stiffness score and APRI than those without EV/GV. As for EV/GV diagnosis, the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve were 0.89 (95% CI 0.80 to 0.98) for TE and 0.87 (95% CI 0.78 to 0.96) for APRI, respectively. The sensitivity (and specificity) of TE (using a cut-off value of 12.7 kPa) and APRI (using a cut-off value of 1.92) in predicting EV/GV were 84% (77%) and 84% (83%), respectively, whereas the sensitivity (and specificity) of splenomegaly in predicting EV/GV were 92% (85%).ConclusionsTransient elastography is a useful tool for predicting the presence of EV/GV. In addition, basic physical examination, routine biochemical and hematological tests, are still worthwhile and correlate well with the presence of EV/GV in patients with BA post portoenterostomy.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Chongsrisawat et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.