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The 73rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) takes place on November 4th-8th in Washington DC. As many as 10,000 attendees will convene in an effort to advance and disseminate the science and practice of hepatology, and to promote liver health and quality patient care. Key Opinion Leaders Stephen Harrison, Jörn Schattenberg and patient advocate Jeff McIntyre join Roger Green to preview key presentations and posters of interest.

This conversation focuses on a presentation by Rohit Loomba that will review results from MAESTRO-NASH, a 2,000-patient Phase 3 trial. Stephen highlights that this analysis demonstrated FIB-4 with a cutoff of 1.3 failed to identify 57% of F2 patients, 40% of F3 and 26% of F4. To Stephen, this implies that if we rely solely on FIB-4, “we’re probably leaving behind a lot of patients that should be treated.”  He suggests adding VCTE to FIB-4 to improve precision in screening these patients. As the session ends, Jörn shares his impressions and agrees with Stephen that FIB-4 is inappropriate for specialty clinics. He notes that the primary anticipated use is to screen patients in referral pathways where the number of patients with clinical fibrosis is far lower.