Personalised risk profile developed for patients with liver disease

(c) 2023 raker/Shutterstock - A research team from the Department of Medicine III at MedUni Vienna and University Hospital Vienna has conducted a large-scale study showing the important value of repeated liver assessments by a novel method that can significantly improve risk assessment in patients with chronic liver disease. The dynamics of regular measurements of liver stiffness indicate a personalised patient risk profile which enables the initiation of individualized treatment strategies. The research findings were recently published in the peer-reviewed scientific top journal Gastroenterology. The method developed in the study centres on measurements of liver stiffness, an assessment approach that is increasingly applied in everyday clinical practice to determine the severity of chronic liver disease and inform treatment decisions. However, until now it had been unclear how to interpret changes in liver stiffness over time. To help provide answers to this question, a team of researchers headed by Georg Semmler, David Bauer, and Thomas Reiberger from the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Department of Internal Medicine III at MedUni Vienna and University Hospital Vienna analysed liver stiffness meassurements in a large cohort of patients with chronic liver disease patients. Over the an average observation period of around six years, a total of 8,561 liver stiffness measurements were performed in 2,508 individual patients.