This is an automatically translated article.
The article is expertly consulted by MSc, BS. Dang Manh Cuong - Radiologist - Radiology Department - Vinmec Central Park International General Hospital. The doctor has over 18 years of experience in the field of ultrasound - diagnostic imaging.The principle of ultrasound is to record normal or abnormal images of some internal organs through ultrasound waves and then reconstruct the images using a modern computer system. In which, liver ultrasound is a very commonly used subclinical, so is liver ultrasound accurate?
1. What is liver ultrasound?
Liver ultrasound is a very common imaging method, applied in assessing liver and biliary status. Liver ultrasound can be applied to all subjects and does not affect the patient's health.Liver ultrasound is often used to evaluate lesions and pathologies in the liver. Liver ultrasound can be performed separately or as part of a general abdominal ultrasound technique. When doing an ultrasound of the liver, the doctor can see abnormal signs, thereby identifying the disease and the appropriate and effective treatment.
2. What role does ultrasound play in diagnosing liver diseases?
Liver ultrasound helps to delineate lobes, segments and subsegments of the liver, thanks to the structure related to the aorta, inferior vein, portal vein, and superior hepatic vein, thereby detecting many types of lesions. liver damage:2.1. Acute and chronic hepatitis Liver ultrasound helps doctors detect liver damage in acute and chronic hepatitis through images of increased liver size but no significant change in the liver parenchyma .
2.2. Fatty liver Unlike normal liver ultrasound results, when fatty liver will give images of part or all of liver parenchyma light up through ultrasound, thereby helping to assess the patient's liver condition.
2.3. Cirrhosis Diagnosis of cirrhosis on ultrasound is usually based on liver size and liver parenchyma. Compared with normal liver ultrasound results, the liver size of cirrhosis will increase at first, then after cirrhosis in the late stage, the liver tends to shrink.
In addition, at the late stage, ultrasound also shows the liver is nodular with small to medium size, less than 1cm in diameter. Besides, ultrasound also detects the consequences of cirrhosis such as ascites, varicose veins, enlarged spleen...
Hình ảnh xơ gan: Siêu âm cắt đứng dọc (A) bộc lộ nốt bề mặt, dịch ổ bụng và nhu mô thô. Các ảnh đứng dọc cho thấy (B) phì đại phân thùy ngoài, (C) phì đại thùy đuôi, và (D) teo thùy phải.
Compared with normal liver ultrasound results, ultrasound results of liver cancer are usually hepatomegaly or single lobe or segmental enlargement, rough liver surface. In the ultrasound image of liver cancer, the tumor is a solid mass with a regular or irregular border, surrounded by a hypoechoic border, less than 3cm in size in the early stage and over 10cm when detected in the late stage. .
In the case of a necrotic liver tumor, the liver ultrasound will show a solid mass, hollow in the middle, with a thick and irregular hollow margin.
If liver cancer develops on a healthy liver, ultrasound will show normal surrounding liver parenchyma, if cancer appears on liver cirrhosis due to alcohol or viral hepatitis, it will show signs of accompanying signs of cirrhosis. It can be seen that for patients with liver cancer, liver ultrasound is very important.
In addition, liver ultrasound also helps doctors detect abscesses - liver abscesses, liver flukes, liver cysts, hemangiomas in the liver... and assess the severity of the disease, thereby offering treatment methods. suitable treatment.
3. Is liver ultrasound accurate?
The method of liver ultrasound has no contraindications to any patient, can be applied to all subjects, including children, without harmful effects on the patient's health.Currently, liver ultrasound is very popularly used in the process of checking and treating liver disease. Liver ultrasound is a subclinical with high accuracy and reliability. However, ultrasound alone is not enough to make a comprehensive assessment of the patient's condition. Liver ultrasound should be combined with other testing methods to confirm the diagnosis of liver disease when necessary. Therefore, in the unfortunate case of liver disease, the patient needs to go to a reputable hospital to check and do a full range of in-depth tests, accurately assess the disease status and receive appropriate treatment. .
Siêu âm gan cần được thực hiện bởi bác sĩ chuyên khoa
4. Notes when going for liver ultrasound
About 1 week before the liver ultrasound, the patient should limit eating foods that are difficult to digest, foods containing a lot of fat. Patients should only eat easy-to-digest and frugal foods so as not to put detoxification pressure on the liver.The best time to perform liver ultrasound is in the morning. When going to the doctor, the patient needs to have an empty stomach (on an empty stomach) to ultrasound the liver for the most accurate results, avoiding the phenomenon of food making many ultrasound images.
On the other hand, according to the explanation of doctors, after eating, the gallbladder will shrink, which limits the assessment of the gallbladder, although it has little effect on the liver, but doctors still recommend patients to have an ultrasound at Fasting to combine the assessment of gallbladder status during liver ultrasound.
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