Hepatic fibrosis is a common pathway leading to liver cirrhosis, which is the end result of any injury to the liver.

No abstract

Serum levels of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) were reported to increase in patients with significant or advanced hepatic fibrosis. Combination of non-invasive tests decreases the use of liver biopsy in large proportion of chronic HCV patients. The aim of the study was to compare and combine AFP with commonly used non-invasive fibrosis tests in novel scores for prediction of different stages of hepatic fibrosis. Six hundred and fifty two treatment naïve chronic hepatitis C patients were enrolled. Demographic data, basic pre-treatment laboratory tests including complete blood count (CBC), liver biochemical profile and renal functions test, international normalized ratio (INR) in addition to AFP, liver stiffness measurement (LSM) by Fibroscan and liver biopsies were retrospectively analyzed. AST to Platelet Ratio Index (APRI) and FIB-4 scores were calculated. Different predictive models using multivariate logistic regression analysis were generated and presented in equations (scores) composed of a combination of AFP, LSM plus FIB-4/APRI scores. AFP was correlating significantly with LSM, FIB-4, and APRI scores. Areas under receiver operating characteristic curves (AUROCs) for predicting significant hepatic fibrosis, advanced hepatic fibrosis, and cirrhosis were 0.897, 0.931, and 0.955, respectively, for equations (scores) containing AFP, LSM, and FIB-4. AUROCs for predicting significant hepatic fibrosis, advanced hepatic fibrosis and cirrhosis were 0.897, 0.929, and 0.959, respectively, for equations (scores) containing AFP, LSM, and APRI. The study shows that combining AFP to serum biomarkers and LSM increases their diagnostic performance for prediction of different stages of liver fibrosis.

Treatment of HCV in successfully treated HCC is feasible, with the best results achieved using multiple direct-acting antivirals and RBV; a high rate of HCC recurrence was observed, especially within the first 6 months of treatment initiation (ClinicalTrials.gov no: NCT02771405).

Endoscopic band ligation is regarded as the main therapeutic option for acute esophageal variceal bleeding, while sclerotherapy may be used in the acute setting if ligation is technically difficult. The incidence of difficult-to-perform band ligation in acute esophageal variceal bleeding, as well as the outcome of patients subjected to injection sclerotherapy as an alternative treatment, has not been clearly investigated. Our aim is to study the outcome of patients subjected to injection sclerotherapy in the acute setting of esophageal variceal bleeding when endoscopic band ligation is technically difficult to perform. We included 151 patients with acute esophageal variceal bleeding originnating from medium or large sized varices. All patients were planned for EBL as the 1st treatment option (EBL group 61.6%), meanwhile, EIS using 5% ethanolamine oleate was reserved as the 2nd treatment option when EBL was technically difficult (EIS group 38.4%). The mean time to restore hemodynamic stability was significantly prolonged in the EIS group (11.5 ± 6.5 hrs versus 9.5 ± 5.0 hrs, p 0.05). Initial control of bleeding was significantly higher in the EBL group versus the EIS group (96.7% vs 84.5%, p 0.021). Re-bleeding was more among the EIS group (42.9% vs 24.2%, p 0.04). There were no significant differences as regarding mortality and duration of hospital stay. So, a considerable proportion of cases presenting with acute variceal bleeding will have difficulty in performing EBL. In these patients, sclerotherapy is not a waning procedure with an accepted success rate, without much additional complications and without deranging mortality.