What is liver fibrosis?
The liver is a vital organ that purifies the blood and synthesises, stores and transforms substances essential to the body; those functions are degraded by fibrosis. Excessive alcohol intake, infection by hepatitis B and C viruses, diabetes, certain drugs, biliary diseases, or haemochromatosis may cause liver fibrosis. This leads to stiffness of liver which hampers its functioning. In later stages liver fibrosis leads to liver cirrhosis. How do we assess for liver fibrosis? Normally, most liver disease patients would require undergoing a liver biopsy to look for liver fibrosis. But liver biopsy involves putting a needle into the liver to take a small piece of the liver for evaluation. However, liver biopsy is invasive and maybe associated with some complications (albeit rare) such as pain at the biopsy site and risk of internal bleeding. Can we look for liver fibrosis non-invasively? Yes, by fibroscan we can assess for live fibrosis non-invasively. Fibroscan is a new instrument develop
