Noninvasive assessment of liver fibrosis and portal hypertension with transient elastography.

Hepatic fibrogenesis, the "final" common result of injury to the liver, is believed to be a critical factor leading to hepatic dysfunction and may be important in the pathogenesis of portal hypertension. Thus, accurate assessment of the degree of fibrosis is important clinically. For many years, examination of hepatic histopathology has been considered to be the "gold standard" tool used to assess fibrosis. However, liver biopsy is invasive, and in many instances not favored by patients or physicians. Thus, alternative approaches to measure liver fibrosis would be extremely attractive. To the extent that transient elastography is able to measure "liver stiffness," which is proportional to the degree of liver fibrosis, this technique holds great promise.