Chronic hepatitis C infection: how much are physicians aware of?

Physician awareness of hepatitis C virus among different departments

Aim of the study

To determine the anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) positivity in our region and to evaluate physician awareness of HCV among different inpatient and outpatient departments in a tertiary reference center in Turkey.

Material and methods

This retrospective study was conducted between January 2017 and January 2020. The patients tested for anti-HCV for any reason were enrolled from the data of all patients admitted to our hospital, which is the reference center of the region.

Results

A total of 121,492 anti-HCV assays were screened from the computerized database. Total number of patients with a positive anti-HCV result was 891 (0.81%). HCV RNA was positive in 147 (16.5%) of 891 patients and negative in 389 (43.7%) patients. Unfortunately HCV RNA was not tested in 355 (39.8%) patients. The percentages of the untested patients regarding the departments were 65.38% (n = 85/130) in medical inpatient clinics, 61.02% (n = 72/118) in surgical clinics, 16.67% (n = 88/528) medical outpatient departments, 96.8% (n = 91/94) in surgical outpatient departments, and 90.5% (n = 19/21) in the emergency department.

Conclusions

The prevalence of anti-HCV positivity was found to be 0.81% and was stable in Turkey. However, the level of physician awareness for HCV was unsatisfactory, and differed between departments. Because HCV is commonly asymptomatic, positive patients should not be overlooked and adequate treatment should be administered. Awareness of physicians should be increased to prevent delays in the diagnosis of hepatitis C and to reduce the number of untreated patients.