Diagnostic accuracy of point shear wave elastography and transient elastography for staging hepatic fibrosis in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: a meta-analysis

Objective

This study aimed to assess the accuracy of staging liver fibrosis in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) usingpoint shear wave elastography (pSWE) and transient elastography (TE).

Setting

Relevant records on NAFLD were retrieved from PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure databases up to 20 December 2017. A bivariate mixed-effects model was conducted to combine sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio and area under the summary receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) between pSWE and TE. A sensitivity analysis was implemented to explore the source of heterogeneity.

Participants

Patients with NAFLD who had a liver stiffness measurement using pSWE and TE before liver biopsy were enrolled according to the following criteria: 2x2 contingency tables can be calculated via the reported number of cases; sensitivity and specificity were excluded according to the following criteria: history of other hepatic damage, such as chronic hepatitis C, concurrent active hepatitis B infection, autoimmune hepatitis, suspicious drug usage and alcohol abuse.

Results

Nine pSWE studies comprising a total of 982 patients and 11 TE studies comprising a total of 1753 patients were included. For detection of significant fibrosis, advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis, the summary AUC was 0.86 (95% CI 0.83 to 0.89), 0.94 (95% CI 0.91 to 0.95) and 0.95 (95% CI 0.93 to 0.97) for pSWE, and the summary AUC was 0.85 (95% CI 0.82 to 0.88), 0.92 (95% CI 0.89 to 0.94) and 0.94 (95% CI 0.93 to 0.97) for TE, respectively. The proportion of failure measurement was over tenfold as common with TE using an M probe compared with pSWE.

Conclusion

pSWE and TE, providing precise non-invasive staging of liver fibrosis in NAFLD, are promising techniques, particularly for advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis.

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