Industry Workshop by GE HealthCare : Focus on Liver
Liver Ultrasound and MAFLD: a modern toolkit for a modern pandemic
Metabolic-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is an entity affecting a significant percentage of population worldwide and showing an increasing trend. About one billion of the world’s population is estimated to suffer from this disease, asymptomatic and under-diagnosed in a percentage of cases. MAFLD is characterized by a disease continuum leading the patients to steato-hepatitis, increasing grades of fibrosis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma, a malignancy with significant morbidity and mortality. It is evident that MAFLD requires screening, early and accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment to stop its progression or regress. Ultrasound with its latest advances provides us with an excellent modality to target and accurately quantify all the key pathologic components of MAFLD: fat deposition and fibrosis development. Once a focal liver lesion develops, in the form of either a benign regenerative nodule or a malignant HCC, contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) can be used to accurately characterize the lesion and establish the diagnosis. Adopting this modern ultrasonographic toolkit is very well-suited to address the needs of this growing modern pandemic, allowing healthcare professionals for accurate and early screening and detection, grading and monitoring treatment response.