Addition of ELF to the iLFT pathway
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Addition of the enhanced liver fibrosis (ELF) score to potentially reduce referral from indeterminate fibrosis estimates in the intelligent liver function test pathway (iLFT): a pilot study
IRAS ID
255982
Contact name
Jennifer H Nobes
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Dundee
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 6 months, 1 days
Research summary
This study aims to improve a new testing pathway for liver disease, called the "intelligent liver function test" (iLFT), which has been developed and rolled-out across NHS Tayside. This testing pathway includes many individual blood tests which, in combination with clinical information, can be used to determine the likely cause of liver dysfunction. The results can also be used to calculate fibrosis scores which estimate the amount of scarring and damage to the liver. This helps us to decide whether patients can be managed in Primary Care, or whether they need to be referred to a hospital liver specialist.
At present we are using two scores for liver fibrosis (scarring) called the FIB-4 score and the NAFLD fibrosis score. In order to ensure we don’t miss any serious liver disease the thresholds for referring patients based on these scores are set low. This creates a large volume of work for the specialist liver doctors (hepatologists) and can cause undue worry and inconvenience to patients who may only have mild liver disease and be safely managed by their GP.
Specifically, this study aims to investigate whether an addition of a new test for fibrosis, the Enhanced Liver Fibrosis (ELF) test, could be used to help us to decide which patients need to be referred. The ELF test measures different substances in the blood which are directly related to liver scarring. We plan to perform the ELF test on the blood samples of iLFT patients with borderline FIB-4 and NAFLD scores to see whether this would help us to determine the severity of their liver disease and thus whether they require specialist referral.
REC name
East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 1
REC reference
19/ES/0002
Date of REC Opinion
23 Jan 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion