Clinical problems and treatment of patients with chronic hepatitis C

Chronic viral hepatitis C is a chronic inflammatory disease lasting more than 6 months with predominant damage to liver tissue due to infection with the hepatitis C virus, which can lead to serious consequences: liver cirrhosis, liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma), and death. The etiological factor of this disease is a small hepatotropic RNA virus from the Flaviviridae family. Infection with the hepatitis C virus in a greater proportion of cases (55–85 %) leads to a chronic course of the disease, and over the next decades in about a quarter of patients, it leads to the development of liver cirrhosis, which, in turn, can serve as the basis for the formation of hepatocellular carcinoma.