Abstract
Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major public health problem at a global
level, causing an enormous burden of hepatic and extra-hepatic morbidity and mortality.
Treatment of chronic HCV (CHC) has been revolutionized in the last few years by the
introduction of highly effective and well tolerated direct acting antiviral agents
(DAAs) able to achieve >90% rates of sustained virological response (SVR) in many
groups of patients, including those previously excluded from interferon-based regimens.
For such reason interferon-free regimens are now the treatments of choice for all
patients. Successful anti-HCV treatment can stop liver disease progression and can
solve the HCV-related extra hepatic manifestations, eventually reducing both liver-related
and overall mortality.
Together with the rapidly accumulating data about the evolution of treatment landscape,
different guidelines from national and international Liver Scientific Societies have
been published until today. However, these recommendations may not be applied worldwide
as, due to high treatment costs, most of them identify as priority groups only patients
with advanced liver disease. Moreover some types of patients pose clinical management
problems for which even the guidelines do not always provide useful answers.
With the aim of treatment optimization by filling some of the gaps of the current
guidelines and addressing the remaining unmet needs in practice, a group of Italian
experts, experienced on treatment of HCV infection, met in Stresa in February 2016.
The summary of all the considerations arising from this two-day meeting and the final
statements are reported in this position paper.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 04, 2016
Accepted:
June 8,
2016
Received:
April 7,
2016
Identification
Copyright
© 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Editrice Gastroenterologica Italiana S.r.l.
