Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Aug 27, 2022; 14(8): 1576-1583
Published online Aug 27, 2022. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v14.i8.1576
Missed opportunities for hepatitis C treatment at a tertiary care hospital in South Australia
Sreecanth Sibhi Raja, Suzanne Edwards, Jeffrey Stewart, Dep Huynh
Sreecanth Sibhi Raja, Jeffrey Stewart, Dep Huynh, Department of Gastroenterology, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woodville 5011, South Australia, Australia
Suzanne Edwards, Department of Statistician, School of Public Health, University of Adelaide, Adelaide 5000, South Australia, Australia
Author contributions: Raja SS contributed to study conception and design, also contributed to data collection and analysis as well as drafting and revision of the manuscript; Huyn D contributed to study design, supervision, data analysis and manuscript preparation; Stewart J contributed to data collection and analysis; Edwards S performed statistical analysis.
Institutional review board statement: This retrospective cohort study was completed in accordance with the guidelines set by the South Australian Health Research Governance Policy Directive.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous de-identified data.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at sreecanth.raja@sa.gov.au. Individual consent was not obtained but the presented data is de-identified without risk of identification.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Sreecanth Sibhi Raja, MBBS, Research Fellow, Department of Gastroenterology, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, 28 Woodville Road, Woodville 5011, South Australia, Australia. sreecanth.raja@sa.gov.au
Received: August 1, 2021
Peer-review started: August 1, 2021
First decision: September 29, 2021
Revised: November 1, 2021
Accepted: July 11, 2022
Article in press: July 11, 2022
Published online: August 27, 2022
Core Tip

Core tip: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment in Australia has undergone a major paradigm shift since the advent of direct acting anti-viral (DAA) therapy. Uptake of DAA therapy for HCV is falling despite universalisation of access through pharmaceutical benefit scheme listing. In our study, 26% of chronic hepatitis C patients presenting to a tertiary hospital were referred for treatment. Hospital admissions constitute an excellent opportunity to identify and treat patients with chronic hepatitis C. Extrapolating this study, both nationally and internationally, would serve to supplement treatment numbers in the goal of HCV eradication.