Validation of Spleen Shear Wave Elastography for the Screening of High-risk Varices in Patients with Compensated Advanced Chronic Liver Disease

Objectives: Total number of avoided endoscopies using Baveno VI criteria is relatively low. Spleen elastography is an attractive tool and when compared with liver stiffness, it better represents the dynamic changes occurring in portal hypertension. The aim of the study was to evaluate spleen shear wave elastography (SWE) in compensated advanced chronic liver disease (cACLD) patients for ruling out the presence of esophageal high-risk varices (HRV).

Methods: A total of 401 patients with cACLD were included in this cross-sectional study. The total sample was split into training set (200 patients) and validation set (201 patients). Spleen stiffness was measured with two-dimensional shear wave elastography (2D SWE). Esophageal HRV were defined as large varices (diameter >5 mm) or small varices with red color signs. In the training set, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was drawn and the area under the curve (AUC) of spleen SWE was assessed. A cutoff value was chosen (highest sensitivity and negative predictive value). In the validation set, the spleen SWE cutoff score and Baveno VI criteria were validated.

Results: The prevalence of HRV was 12% in the training set and 13% in the validation set. Spleen SWE had an AUC of 0.89 in ruling out the presence of high-risk esophageal varices (cutoff value of 48.7 kPa, sensitivity of 100%, and specificity of 53%). Validating spleen SWE ≤48.7 kPa in a different cohort of 201 cACLD patients, 55% of screening endoscopies could be avoided without missing any HRV, whereas using Baveno VI criteria only 30% of screening endoscopies could be spared.

Conclusion: Spleen SWE ≤48.7 kPa was able to identify cACLD patients who could safely avoid screening endoscopy with good accuracy. Spleen SWE could avoid an additional 25% of screening endoscopies compared to the Baveno VI criteria and no HRV were missed.