A Simple, Easy-to-Use Scoring System Identified Advanced Fibrosis in Patients with Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Several noninvasive scoring systems are used to identify advanced fibrosis in nonalcoholic-fatty-liver-disease (NAFLD) patients. These systems help to avoid liver biopsies, but some use proprietary assays (see NEJM JW Gastroenterology Feb 2019 and Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol 2018 Nov 21; [e-pub]), some require specialized equipment (transient elastography), and others have moderate accuracy and variable performance depending on patient characteristics (NAFLD fibrosis score [NFS] and FIB-4).

These authors devised the Hepamet Fibrosis scoring system, a noninvasive system using readily available standard variables. They compared it with NFS and FIB-4 scoring methods for identifying advanced fibrosis in an international cross-sectional study of n…