Elastography in Liver-Transplanted Patients

Non-invasive tests for assessing liver fibrosis, especially vibration-controlled transient elastography (VCTE) (also commonly known as transient elastography, TE) which measures liver stiffness (LS), have been incorporated into clinical practice as a reliable tool in the longitudinal surveillance of liver-transplanted (LT) patients. Several studies have investigated the role of liver stiffness in the transplant setting and have shown its ability to predict graft damage. Liver stiffness has correlated to the stage of fibrosis in recurrent hepatitis C; it has shown good performance in diagnosing advanced fibrosis, predicting fibrosis progression during follow-up and stratifying LT recipients according to the risk of clinical decompensation. Even if liver biopsy still has a central role in identifying several different aetiologies of graft dysfunction and stage graft disease severity, liver stiffness has proved to help in the early recognition of subclinical liver graft damage and in the selection of those liver-transplanted recipients who should undergo histological evaluation for ongoing hepatic injury during post-LT follow-up.