Disclaimer

What are some of my options? Where can I find more information?

Your doctor will help determine if the treatment medications are an option for you; however, the final decision about whether to be treated is up to you.

If you decide to be treated, you will first need a liver biopsy to find out how damaged your liver is (the amount of scarring and inflammation). The liver biopsy is relatively simple and is done as an outpatient procedure. We numb the area where we will take the biopsy and use a long needle to take a very small sliver of liver tissue that we then look at under the microscope.

If you decide not to be treated, the doctor will follow you to make sure you and your liver are not having any major problems.

There are many resources for people who have hepatitis C. We hope this Website answers most of your questions. The American Liver Foundation is another resource for you to consider. Your doctor should be able to provide you with literature about the disease.

How sick will I become? What's going to happen to me?

It is very difficult to predict what is going to happen. Usually we can "guesstimate" if the disease is likely to progress faster or slower depending on how long you have had it, how old you were at the time you became infected, how much inflammation and fibrosis are present in your liver biopsy, whether you are immunosuppressed or not, whether you have other liver inflammatory conditions (such as chronic hepatitis B or fatty liver with inflammation), whether you currently or have in the past used alcoholic beverages excessively, and whether you are coinfected with HIV or not. Other factors such as gender, weight, and ethnicity may also play a role but not a determining one. It is important to remember that neither the viral genotype nor the viral load are determinants of outcome of your disease and should not be followed for that reason; on the other hand, these two are very strong predictors of the outcome of therapy when interferon-based treatments are used.

How much of my liver is working? Can my liver repair itself?

We have no good way of assessing how much of your liver is working. In chronic liver disease, the liver usually can cope throughout years of continuous injury. Eventually, it may reach a point where it cannot handle one or more of its functions, entering the phase of decompensated liver disease. The liver is one of the most resilient organs in our body; it actively repairs and remodels itself, usually through years of continuous insult or damage. In rare instances, the destruction of liver cells is so rapid and generalized that it can overwhelm this ability of the liver to regenerate itself, leading to acute liver failure. Hepatitis C almost never causes acute liver failure.

When will there be a cure for hepatitis C?

HCV is effectively cured in greater that 50% of the cases, depending on which type of HCV you have-genotypes 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3a, or 3b.