Non-invasive fibrosis assessment in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

In conclusion, there has been a lot of effort to find acceptable non-invasive alternatives to liver biopsy for diagnosing and staging liver fibrosis in NAFLD. To date, the best-validated simple non-invasive tests with the highest accuracy for ruling out advanced fibrosis are the FIB-4, NFS and the Hepamet score. The VCTE (Fibroscan®) is currently the best-validated imaging technique, and when used in conjunction with serum biomarker tests may be useful for identifying NAFLD patients who require a liver biopsy to more accurately stage the severity of fibrosis. To date, research has shown that combining different serum fibrosis biomarkers can improve accuracy and reliability and most panels mentioned in this article are either established tests that have undergone extensive validation, or are lesser-known potentially better tests that require further validation to prove their worth as diagnostic markers of liver fibrosis in NAFLD.