My wife and I recently attended a Love Your Liver roadshow where we were both Fibroscanned. My results were fine but my wife had a reading where she was then given a referral letter to take to her GP.
She is an active, healthy, slim 70 year old with no health issues apart from raised cholesterol for which she takes statins. She drinks 2 bottles of wine per week with breaks in between. She has an appointment with her GP next week with a view to having further tests carried out. We are both very worried as this has come completely out of the blue. Any advice would be most appreciated
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Curtis60
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Obviously she needs some follow up with some blood tests and perhaps further scans. But I don't think 10.4kPa is necessarily alarming but it needs further investigation certainly.
Fibroscan scores can indicate the level of fibrosis in the liver but different underlying conditions have different score charts (you can search for fibroscan score chart online and get a full colour picture in images, I would share it here but folks have complained about me doing so in the past).
In NAFLD for instance 10.4kP may indicate a result approaching cirrhosis (F3-F4) level but in alcohol related liver disease only F2 (moderate fibrosis). In both of these instances this score is in the range where hopefully progress can be stopped and damage potentially reversed.
Accuracy of the fibroscan will also depend on whether or not there is some degree of ongoing liver inflammation - kPa scores can be falsly inflated when the liver has ongoing inflammation and some simple blood tests will examine whether or not there is an issue there.
There are many causes of liver damage - the fastest rising in the Western World is Non Alcohol Related Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) and whilst your wife may be slim perhaps the cholesterol issue could be contributing to that .
When my hubby was diagnosed with cirrhosis he was stick thin, lean and generally lived a fit and active lifestyle but his consultant still wanted to rule out NAFLD as the cause ........... saying "even a racing snake can get fatty liver!". In the end hubbies liver damage was due to auto immune hepatitis.
A bottle of wine is 7-9 units per bottle (depending on the chart used) so if she's drinking two bottles a week she's either right on the government guidance limit or even exceeding it so alcohol too can be playing a role ............. especially in a thin female where 'tolerances' may be lower.
Whilst awaiting her further tests she should perhaps have a look at her intake of alcohol and see if she can leave out those two bottles altogether ............ her liver will thank her for it. Also, the BLT has guidance on NAFLD with a fairly new publication on treating NAFLD with health eating and exercise. See if there is anything there she can change.
Doctor will need to check her out and perhaps refer on to hospital specialists for future tests but there is no harm now in making some positive lifestyle changes that might improve some of the potential problem.
Hi Mark, I've never seen charts where haemochromatosis is mentioned but I guess as a rarer condition they've never seen enough patients to get a bench mark as to what kPa refers to what level of damage - I had a good search last night after spotting your post. It's only in the past couple of years that they've included a bar for AIH which is also one of the rarer conditions.
My wife went to her GP this morning to discuss the Fibroscan reading of 10.4 kPa. The GP using the results of recent blood test did a Fib4 calculation of AST ALT & Platelets with a final score of 1.34
He concluded that my wife’s liver was fine and no further action was necessary. My wife is hughley relieved. I hope his diagnosis is correct?
She maybe needs to take the warning from the scare and knock the bottles of vino on the head to prevent anything going wrong in future. I am not very up on fib 4 but AST and ALT won't necssarily be raised even in advanced liver disease. I take it she did get a full set of bloods done i.e. liver function tests (LFT), kidney function (u's & e's) and full blood count.
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Fibroscan results interpetation please. Thanks
Fibroscan results
Fibroscan Result
FIBROSCAN RESULTS
Fibroscan results 
