Mrs Keppy is a fifty-five-year-old married female who comes to your office because her husband was recently diagnosed with hepatitis C. She wants to know if she should be tested and what she can expect from her husband’s diagnosis. What will you say to her regarding her risk factors and her husband’s treatment and prognosis?
First, Mrs Keppy needs to understand that hepatitis C is an irritation of the liver caused by a viral infection is known as hepatitis C infection (HCV). The disease enters into a person’s body if he or she comes in contact with irresistible liquids and discharges from another person who is contaminated with the hepatitis C virus ( Daniel, 2018) . It is possible to live with hepatitis C for a long time without notice. But once it has caused substantial damage to the liver that is when it starts to show the symptoms
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It is therefore imperative for Mrs Keppy to get tested for the virus. Around 15-25% of the people with HCV can be able to clear it since it does not have any life-threatening effects. Both mild and chronic HCV is treatable, and it only requires a patient to take a combination of medication up to the time when the virus clears from the body. Mrs Keppy’s condition is manageable. Drugs that treat hepatitis are improved continuously by some researches, and as such the treatment he is receiving will clear away the virus, and it will never come back ( Petruzziello et al., 2016 ).
The chances of Mrs Keppy contracting the disease are 100 % because it can be transmitted through sexual activities. Similarly, research by Lanini et al. (2016) indicated that baby boomers are five times more likely to contract hepatitis C than other groups. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has asserted that HCV results in more deaths than any other diseases. This is because baby boomers have a low HCV screening habit.
According to Daniel (2018), hepatitis is a long-term disease. If not treated is not done early enough, it can lead to liver scarring. Between 5 and 20% of the people who experience chronic hepatitis are customarily diagnosed with cirrhosis within 20 years. Mrs Keppy’s husband's life expectancy entirely relies on how much his liver has been damaged. His future life depends on well he responds to treatment.
References
Daniel.M (2018). What’s the Outlook and Life Expectancy for Hepatitis C? retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health/hepatitis-c/hepatitis-prognosis-and-life-expectancy
Lanini, S., Easterbrook, P. J., Zumla, A., & Ippolito, G. (2016). Hepatitis C: global epidemiology and strategies for control. Clinical Microbiology and Infection , 22 (10), 833-838.
Petruzziello, A., Marigliano, S., Loquercio, G., Cozzolino, A., & Cacciapuoti, C. (2016). Global epidemiology of hepatitis C virus infection: An update of the distribution and circulation of hepatitis C virus genotypes. World journal of gastroenterology , 22 (34), 7824.
