Outpatient liver biopsy: a prospective evaluation of 500 cases

Percutaneous core liver biopsy plays an important role in the management of parenchymal liver disease in establishing diagnosis, evaluating prognosis and monitoring the effect of therapy. Despite the first biopsy been carried out over 100 years ago, debate surrounds best practice. Day case liver biopsy has become increasingly popular and has not been shown to be associated with increased complications.1,2 Under most day case regimens, patients are observed for up to six hours post biopsy but the majority of complications occur within the first hour post procedure and studies have suggested that the observation period may be reduced from the standard 4–6 h.3–5 Our study prospectively evaluated short stay (1 hour observation) liver biopsy over a 3 …