liver palm and liver damage?

Since hbv is often asymptomatic, it would be good if there are any sign to watch between lab tests.In chinese community, people correlate liver palm to liver damage. Is it scientific?

What are the differences of liver biopsy and fibroscan in terms of detecting liver damage?

[stef2011]

people correlate liver palm to liver damage. Is it scientific?
i don t know but when my mother had cirrhosis palm turned red, same thing for me, hopefully my sister will not reach cirrhosis to confirm it since drugs with no resistance are finally available

fibroscan is the best to detect severe fibrosis/cirrhosis, unfortunately it is very expensive machine.

the most sensitive tool to measure liver function (and fibrosis/cirrhosis too) is the one used to detect helictobacter but they are still making trials to confirm values correlated with liver damage in more patients

biopsy is not good for detecting cirrhosis/severe fibrosis, fibroscan is much more sensitive and at worst will give false positives of cirrhosis instead of severe fibrosis but better a false positive then missing it.fibroscan is less sensitive to distinguish f2 and f3.
fibrosca is also much better since you can make as many readings as you like so you can follow improvment during therapy.actually here in italy fibroscans are available as early as 2004 and biopsy is almost not used anymore in best liver centers

the biggest mistke of biopsy is that fibrosis is not the same on all the liver and the sample is too small so it can easily give a lower result than reality, there are also mistakes from doctors reading results and risks

[cam4930]

Stefano: Can you discribe how a liver palm looks like? Did it turn to red gradually over time? The palm naturally is a bit pink, so it is hard to to imagine what color or pattern is considered as liver palm. If people in this forum can have a poll, some correlation can be built. Then hbv liver damage is not asymptomatic any more. Thanks

[cajim]

Liver palms:

http://www.medhelp.org/user_photos/show/159644?personal_page_id=9367

[stef2011]

Can you discribe how a liver palm looks like?

like the less red ones in the pics cajim linked, actually we noticed that only once we found out cirrhosis.
you notice the palms more red than usual even if you don t press anything, but i think you need confirmation by fibroscan i don t know if red palms happen for other reasons than cirrhosis, it is not reliable

i just suggest if palms are red and one never had biopsy or fibroscan that's the time to do it fast