Finally... Real Utility Scores for Hepatitis C Patients!

Chong and colleagues (1) used gold-standard methods to assess health-state utilities in 193 outpatients at various stages of liver disease due to chronic hepatitis C (HCV) infection. They showed worsening of health-state utility scores with progression of disease from mild to moderate chronic hepatitis, to compensated cirrhosis, to decompensated cirrhosis and to hepatocellular carcinoma. They also confirmed improvement in health-state utility scores after liver transplantation and with sustained virological response (SVR) to treatment of HCV infection. Patients with HCV infection had lower health-state utility scores than the general Canadian population (PÃ0.001) and significantly poorer quality of life compared with population norms in the United States (PÃ0.005)