VA Patients Are Good Candidates for Early HCV Treatment
Reported by Jules Levin
DDW 2014
In light of the new HCV Guidelines section recommending priotritizing treatment for advanced HCV disease
this study in the VA says:
Most people living with Hepatitis C in the VA have early stage chronic Hepatitis C, are treatment naïve, and therefore are good candidates for treatment.
and
We anticipate that novel all-oral therapies would drastically to improve health outcomes within the VA system. These therapies lead to substantially higher health benefits under the scenarios we tested
and
Several modeling studies have concluded that prospective identification of asymptomatic hepatitis C infection and subsequent treatment of all patients is a cost-effective use of health care resources
and
As the cohort of individuals with HCV ages, the consequences of their infections appear to be increasing. Data taken from a representative sample of veterans have demonstrated an increasing prevalence of chronic liver disease as this population ages. For example, the prevalence of cirrhosis among patients with HCV increased from 9.6% in 1996 to 18.5% in 2006. The prevalence of decompensated cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma also increased dramatically over those years, from 5% to 11% and from 0.07% to 1.3% respectively
