Chronic hepatitis B or C is killing more and more people, according to the Institut de Veille Sanitaire. Complications occur more frequently and affect patient survival.
Hepatitis victims are changing. In its latest weekly epidemiological bulletin (BEH), the Institut de Veille Sanitaire (InVS) takes stock of patients hospitalized after a diagnosis of hepatitis. If chronic hepatitis B and C are relatively rare in the general population, their prevalence is exploding in populations at risk such as drug users or migrants in a situation of social insecurity.
Hepatitis B on the rise
More than 215,000 patients were admitted to hospital between 2004 and 2011 for chronic hepatitis B or C. In the first case, the diagnoses increased by 36%, while those of the second group decreased by 16%. This is not the only area in which the forms of the disease differ. The patients themselves do not have the same profile.
In both groups, it is mostly men who are infected, although a balance is established in the hepatitis C group. Overall, patients with chronic hepatitis B (HBC) are younger than those with chronic hepatitis B. of chronic hepatitis C (CHC): 6 years separate them. But the average age varies by sex and type of infection: women in the hepatitis B group are three years younger than their male peers, but six years older than men in the hepatitis C group.
Carcinoma kills half of patients
One trait groups together patients, regardless of the form of the disease: a very high complication rate. Cirrhosis of the liver and hepatocellular carcinoma mainly affect men, and older patients. The second complication occurs more in people hospitalized for HCC. Direct consequence of these comorbidities: an explosion of mortality in patients.
Mortality is on the rise in liver patients, particularly because in 6 out of 10 cases, patients die from a complication. This increase “could be explained by the increase in the proportion and number of cirrhosis in patients with chronic hepatitis B or C, the diagnosis of cirrhosis being associated with greater mortality”, analyze the authors of the study. The occurrence of such a complication is in fact associated with a mortality of 29% in the first group and 31% in the second. But it is when hepatocellular carcinoma breaks out that the chances of survival drop: this complication kills half of the hepatic patients concerned. Alcohol dependence, which is not uncommon in sufferers, also impairs survival.
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