Keywords:
Kidney, Abdomen, Ultrasound, Elastography, Diagnostic procedure, Pathology, Tissue characterisation
Authors:
G. Cardenas, D. I. Herquinigo, P. Romanque, A. Inostroza, L. Toro, I. Gacitua, M. Alvo, L. Michea, P. Segura; Santiago/CL
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2019/C-3712
Conclusion
No correlation was found between ARFI measurements and mild renal fibrosis demonstrated by percutaneous biopsy.
This finding is similar to that of the liver,
where ultrasound elastography is not a useful tool to differentiate normal tissue from mild fibrosis,
but it is able to differentiate the absence of fibrosis or mild fibrosis (F0-F1) from moderate to severe fibrosis.
(F3-F4) (1).
These results are consistent with some studies that have not shown that the evaluation with ARFI of diseased kidneys can predict the different stages of chronic kidney disease (2).
There are also some scientific publications that suggest that the use of renal elastography could be useful in the evaluation of chronic kidney disease,
however the results obtained by many of these publications do not objectify the stage of kidney damage (4).
In addition,
recent data show that it is possible that renal fibrosis is not the only factor that influences the rigidity of the tissue at the level of the kidney (2).
It is possible that the speed of the renal cut wave measured with the ARFI elastography is also influenced by the renal blood flow (5,6).
Although there is scientific evidence that renal ARFI could be useful in the evaluation of renal graft dysfunction (3),
this type of patients were not included in our study.
Given the scientific evidence and the results obtained in this study is that
we believe that the use of elastography for the evaluation of chronic native kidney disease in early stages is a limited tool and that it has not been shown to have a good correlation with the findings in the biopsy or in the clinical-laboratory parameters (7).
It is thus necessary to perform studies with a larger sample of patients,
with greater severity of fibrosis to determine if this technique has a role in the study of patients with chronic kidney disease.