Background: Chronic liver diseases are important causes of morbidity and mortality due to progressive fibrosis. Liver biopsy used for diagnosis of fibrosis but is invasive. Transient elastography is painless, rapid, and non-invasive and can be done in outpatient setting.
Aim: Our objective is evaluating the role of tissue fibronectin to assess the degree of fibrosis in children with chronic liver diseases in comparison with transient elastography.
Patients and Methods: This was a cross sectional study done on 60 children aged from 2months to 18 years with chronic liver diseases from National Liver Institute, menoufia university during the period from January 2020 to November 2021 where transient elastography was performed for them at the same time with needle liver biopsy.
This study included children with; children with autoimmune hepatitis, children with chronic virus infection; children with congenital hepatic malformation as well as children with Wilson disease, while children with severe ascites and those with morbid obesity were excluded from the study.
All children will be subjected to the following: Full history taking, thorough clinical examination; full investigation; fibronectin hepatocyte score and transient elastography.
Results: Our results found good correlation between fibronectin hepatocyte score and the degree of fibrosis diagnosed by transient elastography in advanced stages of liver diseases. Among our studied children the high fibronectin hepatocyte score was detected in children with grade 4 fibrosis followed by grade 3 fibrosis suggesting significant association between severity of fibrosis and elevated scores.