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Is a liver biopsy really needed?
A liver biopsy is a gold standard for hepatic disease diagnosis. In other words, it is the only way to know precisely what is going on inside the liver without taking a chance with guessing right.
Your doctor could also use noninvasive tests, and they are commercially available. These are commonly used to spare patients the anxiety caused by needles during a liver biopsy. They indeed reduce the need for a liver biopsy in some cases, but sometimes they have very limited usefulness. Noninvasive tests are considered enough in very mild or extremely severe stages of liver disease. But most patients are not in the extreme ends of the spectrum. Their condition is probably in an intermediate stage, and in these cases, liver biopsy is perhaps the best option available.
