Histological assessment of the liver

Histopathological assessments play an important role in the diagnosis and management of patients with liver disease. For some conditions, liver biopsy is still routinely used to establish the cause of liver disease. In other circumstances, evaluation of morphological changes provides additional information that is useful for clinical management, for example when assessing disease severity in chronic viral hepatitis and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. However, with the increased use of non-invasive methods for assessing the severity of liver injury, particularly fibrosis, the role of liver biopsy in this respect is changing.