Danin PE, et al. - Researchers planned this work to detect liver complications with the indocyanine green (ICG) clearance test in a population of obese patients scheduled for bariatric surgery. In obese patients, there appeared a correlation between non-invasive evaluation of liver function with the indocyanine green clearance test and histological features of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This could identify non-invasively hepatopathy in obese population and could motive biopsy.

Methods

• A prospective cohort study was performed to investigate morbidly obese individuals receiving bariatric surgery with scheduled hepatic biopsies.
• Researchers determined liver function by the ICG test preoperatively, and performed blood sample collection.
• A single pathologist that was blinded to the results of the ICG test obtained liver biopsy specimens for each patient and classified them according to the NAFLD activity score (NAS).

Results

• This study included 26 patients (7 male and 19 female); mean age of participants was 45.8 years; the mean body mass index was 41.4 kg/m².
• In accordance to the NAS, 6 (23.1%) patients had non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), and 5 patients were considered borderline (19.2%).
• There appeared a closed correlation between the ICG clearance test and hepatic steatosis (r = 0.43, p = 0.03), NAS (r = 0.44, p = 0.025), and fibrosis (r = 0.49, p = 0.01).