Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 7, 2024; 30(17): 2287-2293
Published online May 7, 2024. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v30.i17.2287
Quick and easy assessment of sarcopenia in cirrhosis: Can ultrasound be the solution?
Francesca Campani, Tancredi Vincenzo Li Cavoli, Umberto Arena, Fabio Marra, Erica Nicola Lynch, Claudia Campani
Francesca Campani, Department of Health Science, University Hospital Careggi, University of Florence, Florence 50134, Italy
Tancredi Vincenzo Li Cavoli, Umberto Arena, Fabio Marra, Claudia Campani, Internal Medicine and Liver Unit, University Hospital Careggi, University of Florence, Florence 50134, Italy
Fabio Marra, Claudia Campani, Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Florence, Florence 50134, Italy
Erica Nicola Lynch, Gastroenterology Research Unit, Department of Experimental and Clinical Biomedical Sciences “Mario Serio”, University of Florence, Florence 50134, Italy
Erica Nicola Lynch, Department of Medical Biotechnologies, University of Siena, Siena 53100, Italy
Author contributions: Campani F performed the bibliographic search; Campani F and Li Cavoli TV drafted the initial manuscript; Lynch EN and Campani C re-screened the search results; Lynch EN provided English language revision as a native speaker; Arena U, Marra F, Lynch EN, and Campani C revised the article critically for important intellectual content; and all authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Claudia Campani, MD, PhD, Academic Fellow, Doctor, Research Fellow, Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Florence, Largo Brambilla 3, Florence 50134, Italy. claudiacampani.cc@gmail.com
Received: January 30, 2024
Revised: March 16, 2024
Accepted: April 15, 2024
Published online: May 7, 2024
Core Tip

Core Tip: Cirrhosis is frequently associated with sarcopenia, which negatively impacts the prognosis of cirrhotic patients and affects the response to treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). For these reasons, identifying an easy-to-perform method to assess sarcopenia in is a key element in the optimization of care in this patient population. We believe that ultrasound, a cheap and harmless technique also used for HCC screening in cirrhotic patients, could have an expanding role in the diagnosis and follow-up of sarcopenia in these patients.