Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

ID 368

This project involves running a computer program, through the anonymised coded primary care records of the population of West London, to identify those with Hep C recognisable risk factors.

Chronic hepatitis C infection is a chronic viral infection of the liver that is often asymptomatic. Patients may be infected for many years without symptoms and are at risk of developing liver failure and liver cancer. The condition is curable with a short course (8-12 weeks) of well tolerated medication with cure rates of 95%. There are identifiable risk factors for having chronic hepatitis C infection, although these may have occurred many years ago. These risk factors are often coded within primary care. This project involves running a computer program, through the anonymised coded primary care records of the population of West London, to identify those with these recognisable risk factors. The benefits to patients will be to identify practices with the highest proportion of patients at risk of HCV infection and allow systematic targeting of these practices to run the tool at an individual practice level. This will enable the opportunity to screen and ultimately treat those with currently undiagnosed hepatitis C infection.

21/09/2023

TRE