[Early detection of chronic liver disease in primary care in the apparently health adult population]

Abstract

Liver diseases are highly prevalent and are a major health problem as they progress to more severe forms. In the west, cirrhosis and primitive liver cancer are among the first 10 causes of death in adults. Moreover, chronic liver inflammation, irrespective of cause, is usually asymptomatic. Consequently diagnosis tends to be established when the disease is in the advanced stages and is thus irreversible and with few treatment possibilities. Therefore, ideally, diagnosis would be established in the initial phases of chronic liver inflammation, which would allow the natural history of the disease to be altered by either halting or delaying progression. To date, physicians have been guided by alterations in liver function tests to identify the etiology of liver disease or-depending on the severity of involvement-the presence of liver disease. Abdominal ultrasound findings can also reveal alterations suggesting the presence of chronic liver disease. However, in the last few years, noninvasive methods have been designed. These include serological markers (direct and indirect) of fibrosis and radiological tests (especially elastography) based on measuring liver elasticity, which allow noninvasive quantification of the degree of fibrous tissue in the liver. The use of noninvasive methods may be highly useful in the early detection of liver diseases.