H E PAT O L O G Y I N F O C U S
GASTROENTEROLOGY & ENDOSCOPY NEWS • MAY MAY 2013 2013
received blood transfusions before 1992. “Look at it this way: Most patients don’t even know if they have risk factors or, if they do, they don’t tend to admit that to their family doctor. So the best risk factor we can identify for hepatitis C is the [baby boomer] age cohort,” Dr. LaBrecque said. “By screening this cohort, we’ll identify three-fourths of those patients. If we can identify threefourths of patients, we’re going to make
‘Look at it this way: Most patients don’t even know if they have risk factors or, if they do, they don’t tend to admit that to their family doctor. So the best risk factor we can identify for hepatitis C is that [baby boomer] age cohort.’ —Douglas R. LaBrecque, MD a huge step forward in trying to prevent complications of [liver] disease and in reducing the cost of treating the disease.
The expense of treating someone with advanced liver disease—much less transplanting them, is huge compared
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with the cost of treating the virus in the first place.” Dr. LaBrecque also noted that treatments for HCV infection have become so successful that 70% to 80% of infected patients can have the disease eliminated if caught early. That figure is expected to rise to 90% within the next two years. According to Dr. Shah, if the panel adopted a recommendation for see HCV Screening, page 21