Can We Assess Hepatic Fibrosis Without a Liver Biopsy?

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has become an important comorbidity among patients with HIV infection, leading to cirrhosis, chronic liver disease, and eventually death. Although liver biopsy is considered the gold standard for assessing hepatic fibrosis, it is invasive, has a risk for serious complications, and is subject to sampling error and interobserver variability. One noninvasive alternative being explored is transient elastography, an ultrasound procedure that measures liver stiffness and has been shown to accurately predict hepatic fibrosis in HCV-monoinfected patients. In this study, investigators in Bordeaux, France, compared transient elastography with liver biopsy for the detection of fibrosis in 72 HIV/HCV-coinfected patient…