The role of spleen stiffness using ARFI in predicting esophageal varices in patients with Hepatitis B and C virus-related cirrhosis

INTRODUCTION: Current guidelines recommend that all patients with cirrhosis undergo upper gastrointestinal endoscopy (UGE) screening for esophageal varices (EV). Unfortunately, UGE has a lot of disadvantages, consequently various non-invasive methods of diagnosing EV have been proposed. We evaluated if spleen stiffness (SS) measured by Acoustic Radiation Force Impulse (ARFI) is a viable technique in diagnosing EV. METHODS: We recruited 178 patients with cirrhosis caused by Hepatitis B and C who underwent biochemical tests, abdominal ultrasound, UGE, LS and SS measurements using ARFI elastography. Based on the endoscopic results the patients were divided in 3 groups: without EV, with small EV ( 5 mm). RESULTS: ARFI SS was the only non-invasive parameter associated with the presence of EV (2.7+/-0.30 vs. 3.4+/-0.52, p 5mm) had better results with an AUROC 0.969 (CI 95%:0.935-0.99), and for a cut-off of 3.30 m/s: Se 96.4% (CI 95%: 82-99.9%), Sp 88.5% (CI 95%: 78-95%). CONCLUSIONS: SS measured using ARFI is a good method of detecting EV and is an excellent method of diagnosing large EV in patients with virus-related cirrhosis.