Elastography detects liver stiffness tied to heart failure

Sound touch elastography can noninvasively evaluate liver stiffness tied to chronic heart failure, a study published January 1 in the American Journal of Cardiology found. Researchers led by Jing-Wu Yang from Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital in Guangzhou, China, found that patients with reduced ejection fraction and ride-sided heart failure had significantly higher liver stiffness values than control group patients. “Sound touch elastography is a useful clinical technique … which could help patients with chronic heart failure manage their treatment regimens,” Yang and colleagues wrote. Heart failure can affect the health of other organs. For the liver, this effect is known as cardiohepatic syndrome and includes liver congestion and hepatic artery hypoperfusion. Sound touch elastography is a modified shear wave elastography method that uses multiple acoustic radiation force impulses to target an extended region of interest. The resulting display is a real-time colored stiffness map. Yang's team studied liver damage in chronic heart failure patients using sound touch elastography. They included 150 patients in their study and divided them into distinct groups. These included patients with reduced ejection fraction (n = 45), mildly reduced ejection fraction (n = 40), right-sided heart failure (n = 25), and control (n = 40). The group found that while patients with mildly reduced ejection fraction increased slightly compared with the control...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - Category: Radiology Authors: Tags: Ultrasound Source Type: news