A prospective comparative assessment of the accuracy of the FibroScan in evaluating liver steatosis

Recent studies have demonstrated the utility of the FibroScan® device in diagnosing liver steatosis, but its usefulness has not been thoroughly appraised. We investigated the usefulness of the controlled attenuation parameter (CAP) in detecting and quantifying liver steatosis. A prospective analysis was applied to 79 chronic liver disease patients who underwent a liver biopsy, a FibroScan investigation, ultrasonography, and hepatic steatosis index (HSI). The presence and degree of steatosis as measured by the FibroScan device, ultrasonography and HSI were compared with the results for the liver biopsy tissue. There was substantial concordance between the liver biopsy results and the CAP as evaluated by the kappa (κ) index test for detecting liver steatosis (κCAP = 0.77, P