Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) and Cardiovascular Risk: Is Imaging Helpful?

Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) is proving to be a globally prevalent condition. More-over, NAFLD may be an independent risk factor asso-ciated with higher cardiovascular (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Further studies are needed to assess whether NAFLD needs to be included in the athero-sclerotic risk score algorithms or whether patients with NAFLD need to be screened early on to assess their CVD risk especially since imaging such as posi-tron emission tomography can be used to assess both NAFLD and CV disease at the same time. Therefore employing cardiovascular imaging modalities to inves-tigate the incidence, extent, and nature of atheroscle-rotic lesions in NAFLD may be beneficial. Additionally, whether treating NAFLD halts the pro-gression of CVD on imaging remains to be seen.