Hepatitis C Liver Biopsy

This American video of a liver biopsy shows the biopsy experience

video 5 mins long

Hepatitis C Liver Biopsies

Biopsies are done to measure the severity of inflammation, the amount of scarring, and the general health of the liver. This information will be used to help determine if treatment is needed. The most common procedure is to numb the skin and muscle and then quickly insert a long, thin needle into the liver to draw out a specimen. Complications are rare.

A liver biopsy can give valuable information regarding staging, prognosis, and management of Hepatitis C.

Liver biopsy is considered mandatory for accurate staging of early fibrosis

A liver biopsy will be performed in a Hospital as a day patient.

Percutaneous Liver Biopsy - this type of biopsy is done directly through the skin into the liver.

Ultra sound is used to identify the location for the biopsy.

It is a relatively quick procedure the needle is in your liver for only a few seconds, You are medicated and feel very little.

The size of the biopsy specimen, which varies between 1 and 3 centimeters in length and between 1.2 and 2 millimeters in diameter, represents 1/50,000 of the total mass of the liver.

You will be required to stay in the hospital and be monitored for some hours after the procedure.

Approximately one-fourth of patients has pain in the right upper quadrant or right shoulder after liver biopsy. The pain is usually dull, mild, and brief. Ongoing, severe pain in the abdomen should alert the physician to the possibility of a more serious complication.

The mortality rate among patients after percutaneous liver biopsy is approximately 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 12,000.

In New Zealand to access treatment for Hepatitis C mostly you will have to have a biopsy , "It took me years to work up the courage to have one, It was not as bad as i had expected at all." It also revels the extent of liver fibrosis which also may determine your priority for treatment in New Zealand

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How your Liver specimen is graded

Metavir classification for staging of hepatitis C liver disease (In NZ Pharmac uses this system to deterime prority for treatment for some genotype's)

Fibrosis Scale and Grading

Stage 0 No Fibrosis - No scarring

Stage 1 Portal fibrosis - Minimal scarring

Stage 2 Extraportal fibrosis - Scarring has occurred and extends outside the areas in the liver that contains blood vessels

Stage 3 Bridging fibrosis is spreading and connecting to other areas that contain fibrosis

Stage 4 Cirrhosis or advanced scarring of the liver

 

In this liver biopsy you can see Confluent necrosis (bridging). Large zones of hepatocyte injury and loss (blue color) are apparent in this trichrome stained tissue. They link the central vein in the middle of the image to the portal tract, upper left, and probably to another portal tract, to the right