Quantitative assessment of liver steatosis using ultrasound controlled attenuation parameter (Echosens)

Controlled attenuation parameter (CAP) is the algorithm available on the FibroScan system (Echosens, France) for quantification of liver steatosis. It assesses the ultrasound beam attenuation, which is directly related to liver fat content. The inter-observer reproducibility of the technique is high, with a reported concordance correlation coefficient of 0.82. Specific quality criteria for CAP measurements are not clearly defined yet, and there are conflicting results in the literature. Using liver biopsy as the reference standard, several studies have assessed the CAP performance in grading liver steatosis, and have reported that values are not affected by liver fibrosis. The cutoff for detection of liver steatosis reported in the literature ranges from 222 decibels per meter (dB/m) in a cohort of patients with chronic hepatitis C to 294 dB/m in a meta-analysis of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) patients. CAP has been used as a tool to noninvasively evaluate the prevalence of NAFLD in groups at risk or in the general population; however, it should be underscored that different CAP cutoffs for steatosis detection (S > 0) were used in different studies, and this limits the robustness of the findings. CAP, alone or combined with other noninvasive indices or biomarkers, has been proposed as a tool for assessing nonalcoholic steatohepatitis or as a noninvasive predictor of prognosis in patients with chronic liver disease. CAP is easy to perform and has become a point-of-care technique. However, there is a large overlap of values between consecutive grades of liver steatosis, and cutoffs are not clearly defined.