Liver elastography is a test used to evaluate liver fibrosis, which reflects the health and liver damage caused by chronic diseases in this organ, such as hepatitis, cirrhosis, and the presence of fat.
This test is fast, pain-free, and requires no needles or cuts, and can also be used to diagnose diseases, replacing biopsy in many cases.
- However.
- This technology was not integrated into the SUS until October 2015.
- So it is still rare to pass the test in the public health system.
- But it is easier to find it in private clinics.
- With prices ranging from around 1000 reais.
Hepatic elastography has an average duration of 5 to 10 minutes, without the need for preparation or fasting before the procedure, it can be called transient ultrasound or ARFI, depending on the device used.
The scan is similar to the ultrasound, in which the patient is lying on his back and with the T-shirt raised to expose the abdomen, where the doctor places the lubricating gel before passing the tube that will generate images on the device screen. , from what diagnosis and progression of the disease will be evaluated.
Liver elastography may be used to evaluate the following health problems:
In addition to being used to diagnose and identify the severity of these diseases, this test can also be used to assess treatment success, as it can evaluate the improvement or worsening of liver tissue. See symptoms of fatty liver disease, which is fat in the liver.
Only a small part of the results of the elastography tests can be unreliable, a problem that arises mainly when the patient is overweight, obese and elderly.
In addition, the test may also fail when performed on people with a BMI of less than 19 kg/m2 or when the examiner has no experience in the exam.
As this is a painless examination and does not require preparation, elastography does not pose a risk to the patient, unlike during a liver biopsy, in which the patient must be hospitalized for a small part of the organ to be removed for testing.
Biopsy usually causes pain at the site of the procedure and a hematoma in the stomach, and in rarer cases can also lead to complications such as bleeding and pneumotralx, so it’s best to talk to your doctor to assess the best test for identifying and monitoring the disease in question. See how the treatment of fat in the liver and the severity of this disease is going.
Learn about Berardinelli-Seipe syndrome, a disease that decreases the amount of fat in the body, but increases the liver and causes belly swelling and diabetes.