O desempenho da tomografia computadorizada na quantificação da esteatose hepática / The performance of computed tomography in quantifying hepatic steatosis

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2010

RESUMO

INTRODUCTION: Hepatic steatosis is a metabolic disease characterized by accumulated fat in hepatocytes. Among its causes, chronic alcoholism, obesity, type II diabetes mellitus and syndrome metabolic. The interest in detecting and quantifying hepatic steatosis has grown in the past years due to higher prevalence and advances in hepatic surgical technical. Quantifying hepatic fat infiltration is important to follow up treatment of patients with alcoholic and nonalcoholic steatosis and for preoperative assessment of living donor hepatic transplants and of partial hepatectomies. The diagnosis can be made by diverse imaging studies, such as ultrasonography (US), computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MRI), but the most used method for quantifying is hepatic biopsy. If CT proved to be a reliable method for quantification, it could be used as an alternative to biopsy, minimizing costs and eliminating the risks that are inherent to this procedure. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to assess reliability of computed tomography in quantifying hepatic steatosis, comparing its results with histopathological findings. METHODS: A prospective and retrospective cross-section study was carried out with 64 patients submitted to hepatic biopsy and abdominal CT in intervals of up to six months. Hepatic steatosis was stratified as grade 0 (absent), 1 (1 to 33%), 2 (34 to 66%) and 3 (over 66%) upon pathological analysis. Based on CT evaluation, three liver attenuation indices were obtained for each patient: the liver to spleen attenuation ratio; the difference between hepatic and splenic attenuation and the blood-free hepatic parenchymal attenuation, defined as CTL/S, CTL-S and CTLP. These indices were correlated to the grade of hepatic steatosis shown on pathology by the Spearman correlation coefficient, Students t test, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, analysis of variance (ANOVA), Bonferroni test and the ordinal regression model. RESULTS: The statistical analysis of data gathered in this study showed a significant moderate and negative relation between the steatosis indices, calculated with CT examination data and the hepatic fat infiltration grades observed upon pathological analysis. It was also possible to determine the cutoff values for the indices that enabled diagnosis of hepatic steatosis grades 2 or 3 (33% or over) with appropriate sensibility and specificity. However, the performance of the indices was not satisfactory to discriminate each grade of hepatic fat infiltration. CONCLUSIONS: CT is a method that allows quantifying hepatic steatosis if below (grades 0 or 1) or above 33% (grades 2 or 3), but it is not adequate to discriminate each grade separately

ASSUNTO(S)

fatty liver tomografia transplante de fígado hepatectomy fígado gorduroso tomography hepatectomia liver transplantation

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