How splenic stiffness is affected by changes in the liver stiffness measurements and commonly seen comorbidities

Author(s): Sandeep Kaur Toor, Himanshu Gupta, Akshyaya Kumar Nag, Kabir Singh Kang, Shahbaaz Singh Tiwana

Chronic liver disease is broadly categorized into two stages- the compensated and decompensated liver disease. The transition into decompensated liver disease is marked be a significant increase in morbidity and mortality. Hence, there is a continuous effort to develop criteria’s to predict development of decompensation and clinically significant portal hypertension(CSPH). Baveno’s criteria is used to predict development of CSPH on the basis on the liver stiffness( LSM) and splenic stiffness measurements (SSM) values. The current study was done to study the correlation between LSM and SSM values in the different categories of fibrosis. With changing LSM values, SSM changes and this correlation is seen to increase with increasing fibrosis. Hence confirming that SSM has a higher importance in patients with moderate to severe fibrosis. While in cases with mild fibrosis with low LSM values, the SSM values are corroborative but to a lesser extent. Also, the impact of different aetiologies on LSM and SSM values was evaluated.