Author information
1 Department of Internal Medicine, Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ, USA; Department of Medicine, 125 Paterson Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA.
2 Department Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, 125 Paterson Street, Suite 5100B, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA. Electronic address: vr262@rwjms.rutgers.edu.
Abstract
Currently, there is no gold standard serologic or imaging modality to detect hepatic encephalopathy (HE). It is a clinical diagnosis gathered from the history and physical. Imaging is nonspecific; however, PET and MRI have shown areas of utility, but are not widely available, cost-efficient, or necessary for diagnosis. Electroencephalogram has shown promise as it can be used in conjunction with the Portal Systemic Hepatic Encephalopathy Score test to diagnose minimal HE. Further research on these techniques would need to be performed to identify strict criteria and cutoffs for diagnosing HE as well as associated sensitivities and specificities.