Who Needs Hepatitis C Treatment?
Before a person gets caught up in the pros and cons of treatment, it’s important to consider a more basic question: do you need treatment at all? In many cases, you don’t. “A lot of people and even some doctors act like hepatitis C is cancer,” says Howard J. Worman, MD, associate professor of medicine at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. “They behave as if you’ll get sick and die if you don’t treat it right away. But that isn’t what hepatitis C is like.” Since hepatitis C may not cause problems for decades, if at all, merely having the virus is no reason to begin treatment. Instead, doctors usually consider hepatitis C treatment in people who have high viral levels and biopsies that show fibrosis, or scarring of the liver. “Deciding whether to get treatment is almost never an emergency,” Worman tells WebMD. “It’s usually not even urgent. People should take their time in deciding what to do.” In cases where a person has acute hepatitis C — meaning that he or she
