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“As the baby boomers are aging, hepatitis C is truly affecting them,” Ngo-Metzger said. “They had hepatitis C before, but now they’re in this middle age group where you’re seeing them hospitalized.”
By demographic, other significant increases in hospitalization for HCV compared with hospitalization for other indications included men (61.5% vs. 47.9%), African-American patients (26.1% vs. 14%), Hispanic patients (10.1% vs. 7.9%), patients on Medicaid (38.1% vs. 17.4%), patients residing in low-income areas (40% vs. 28.8%) and patients residing in large central metropolitan areas (37.3% vs. 29.5%).
Mental health disorders (71.6% vs. 44.3%) and (34.2% vs. 5.7%) were more common codiagnoses among hospitalized patients with HCV than those without HCV. Among patients aged 18 years to 51 years, mental health disorder codiagnosis was present in 78.4% of stays and substance use disorders in 53.5% of stays.
Similarly, alcohol-related diagnosis unrelated to acute liver disease occurred more often in hospitalizations for HCV than for other indications (26% vs. 5.7%), especially in the younger 18 years to 51 years age group and the baby boomer group.