Background

Obesity is one of the important causes of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD). Therefore, there are clinical needs for non-invasive diagnosis of NAFLD in obese patients. This study aimed to evaluation the efficacy and accuracy of MRI-proton density fat fraction (MRI-PDFF) and TE-controlled attenuation parameter (TE-CAP) in diagnosing hepatic steatosis of obese patient in Korea.

Methods

From 2021 to 2022, patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 kg/m2 or higher who underwent bariatric surgery to reduce weight were reviewed retrospectively. The patients who had the all results of liver histologic assessment, MRI-PDFF and TE-CAP were analyzed. Results The total of 66 patients was reviewed, with 27 (40.9%) males and 39 (59.1%) females. The mean age was 38.45 (+-9.957) years, and the mean BMI was 41.138 (+-8.376) kg/m2. Histological findings were analyzed: steatosis 1.44 (+-0.963), lobular inflammation 1.73 (+-0.755), ballooning 1.61 (+-0.523) and NAS score 4.77 (+-1.537). Histologic fibrosis was confirmed in liver biopsy in 60 patients (90.9%), and the METAVIR stages were stage 1: 26 (39.4%), stage 2: 28 (42.4%), stage 34 (6.1%) and stage 4: 2 (3.0%), respectively.

Results

As a result of non-invasive examination, mean TE-CAP was 334.09 (+-51.619) and mean MRI-PDFF was 19.67 (+-12.272). Both TE-CAP (P<0.0001) and MR-PDFF (P<0.0001) revealed statistically different values according to histologic steatosis grades. A significant correlation was also found between noninvasive MRI-PDFF and TE-CAP (r=0.496, P<0.0001).

Conclusions

The non-invasive test of both TE-CAP and MRI-PDFF are clinically useful for the evaluation of histological steatosis in obese patients.