Aims: With changing indications for performing medical liver biopsies, we aimed to develop a tool to allow pathologists to evaluate the current usefulness, value and impact of their medical liver biopsy service.
Methods: We designed and piloted a questionnaire-based clinico-pathological audit for medical liver biopsies.
Results: The audit tool was simple to implement and provided useful information about our service. Hepatologists felt that 96% of reports were clinically useful. 56% of biopsies confirmed clinical diagnoses, 46% helped differentiate between diagnoses and 42% were able to exclude possible diagnoses. 74% resulted in a change of management and 27% of liver biopsies resulted in a diagnosis which was not clinically suspected.
Conclusions: We demonstrate the usefulness of an audit tool in providing evidence of the value of the liver pathology service in a large UK regional centre.
Keywords: AUDIT; LIVER; QUALITY ASSURANCE.
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