Diagnosis of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease: The importance of pathology / 临床肝胆病杂志

ABSTRACT

Histopathological evaluation based on liver biopsy is required to make a confirmed diagnosis of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, differentiate nonalcoholic fatty liver (NAFL) from nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), and perform the grading and scoring of disease severity, while hematological and radiological examinations are often used in clinical practice. Although there have been a large number of studies on noninvasive models for fibrosis assessment and disease diagnosis in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, the sensitivity and specificity of such models need to be further improved. This article reviews the main pathological features of NAFL and NASH, fibrosis and grading/staging/scoring systems, and the pathological diagnosis of NASH liver cirrhosis, in order to improve the awareness of the histological diagnosis of such disease among clinicians