Noninvasive models for assessment of liver fibrosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B virus infection

Table 1 Advantages and disadvantages of liver biopsy and noninvasive models for detecting liver fibrosis

	Liver biopsy	Noninvasive models
Advantages	Gold standard to assess fibrosis	Non-invasive
	Direct observation and quantitative assessment of fibrosis, inflammation and steatosis	Inter-laboratory reproducibility
	Different stage by different scoring systems	High applicability and wide availability for repeated assays
	Diagnosing different forms of liver disease	Reasonable cost
	Accurately assessing progression of liver disease or the effect of therapy	Accurate assessment of cirrhosis and minimal/no fibrosis
Disadvantages	Invasive	Less accurate for intermediate fibrosis stages
	Sampling error and inter-observer differences	False positive values
	Unsuitable for repeated assays	Scores may change in different disease stages
	Risk of complications, rare major complications, morbidity and mortality	Unsuitable for diagnosing liver disease
	Expensive	Not quantitative