ORIGINAL ARTICLE   

Minerva Medica 2020 June;111(3):197-202

DOI: 10.23736/S0026-4806.19.06109-3

Copyright © 2019 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Noninvasive assessment of liver fibrosis in chronic hepatitis C virus patients compared to liver biopsy: the experience of tertiary level hospital in Serbia

Tomislav PREVEDEN ^{1, 2}, Benjamin VEREŠ ¹, Maja RUŽIĆ ^{1, 2}, Maria PETE ^{1, 2}, Francesco LUZZA ³, Rinaldo PELLICANO ⁴, Ludovico ABENAVOLI ³ ✉

¹ Clinical Center of Vojvodina, Clinic for Infectious Disease, Novi Sad, Serbia; ² Faculty of Medicine, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia; ³ Department of Health Sciences, Magna Graecia University, Catanzaro, Italy; ⁴ Unit of Gastroenterology, Molinette Hospital, Città della Salute e della Scienza, Turin, Italy

BACKGROUND: Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, that is defined by active carriage of HCV RNA in the blood, is represents one of the major public health problems worldwide. In Serbia, the prevalence of anti-HCV positive persons in the general population, is estimated on average 1.13%.
METHODS: The aim of our study was to evaluate the ability of noninvasive scores in order to define the degree of liver fibrosis, and to assess the effect of host and viral factors on fibrosis in chronic HCV patients. In a retrospective analysis a total of 814 patients with chronic HCV infection were included. Liver fibrosis scores were calculated, and in particular AST/ALT Score APRI, Forns Index, and FIB-4 score, and all of them compared with histological classification.
RESULTS: We found that noninvasive biochemical scores of fibrosis, have a good performance especially to distinguish mild and moderate fibrosis to advanced fibrosis. In particular, we found that FIB-4 score is a useful screening tool to accurately exclude patients with advanced disease.
CONCLUSIONS: Noninvasive liver fibrosis scores are efficient tools in the management and follow-up of HCV patients in clinical practice.

KEY WORDS: Liver diseases; Diagnosis; Hepatitis, viral, human; Serbia