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“According to the study, hepatitis C patients with higher odds of cirrhosis include those who are older, males, Asian race, Hispanic ethnicity, genotype 3 infection, HIV coinfection, are diabetic, and have a history of antiviral therapy and a history of alcohol abuse.”
An estimated 2.7 to 3.9 million people in the United States have chronic hepatitis C infections, but many of these patients may be unaware of the severity of their liver damage.
“We looked at evidence of cirrhosis among hepatitis C patients by examining four different parameters: ICD-9 codes; liver biopsy reports; evidence of liver failure; and the FIB-4 test, an easily calculated biomarker. By using all four indicators of cirrhosis, we found a four-fold higher prevalence of cirrhosis than would be indicated by biopsy alone,” Stuart Gordon, MD, director of the division of hepatology and hepatology research at the Henry Ford Liver Disease Center in Detroit, Michigan, told Medical Economics.
Gordon and colleagues analyzed records from a large, geographically and racially diverse group of 9,783 patients receiving care at four large U.S. health systems: Henry Ford Health System in Detroit; Kaiser Permanente Northwest in Portland, Oregon; Kaiser Permanente in Honolulu; and Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pennsylvania.
Their results indicated evidence of cirrhosis in 2,788 of the hepatitis C patients, but, surprisingly, 1,727 of those patients (62%) had no formal documentation in their medical records that they had cirrhosis. Among 661 patients with biopsy-confirmed cirrhosis, only slightly more than half (54%) had a code for cirrhosis.