Reply to: Non-invasive tests and advanced chronic liver disease in NAFLD: two steps forward and one step back?

2021 
We appreciate the interest in our study by Majumdar and Tsochatzis1 and welcome the opportunity to provide some clarifications. The literature to date has examined non-invasive test (NIT) algorithms to rule-in and rule-out advanced fibrosis (AF). The main use of such algorithms is to identify those at low risk of AF who can be managed in primary care. We propose an algorithm2 where the rule-out cut-offs remain optimised for AF, whereas the rule-in cut-offs are optimised for cirrhosis. The false-negative (FN) rate of 10% in our proposed algorithm refers to the FN rate for AF and not cirrhosis as Majumdar and Tsochatzis state in their letter.1 Only 18/570 (3%) of patients with cirrhosis are missed using our proposed algorithm (table 1). View this table: Table 1 Number of patients with fibrosis stage F0–2, F3 and F4 according to LSM cut-offs recommended by the Baveno 6 consensus (10 and 15 kPa) and our previous paper (8 and 20, and 8 and 28 kPa) We also argue2 that patients with NITs above the rule-in cut-off for AF should undergo liver biopsy to identify those with cirrhosis who should undergo …
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