Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Aug 27, 2023; 15(8): 973-984
Published online Aug 27, 2023. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v15.i8.973
Stages of care for patients with chronic hepatitis C at a hospital in southern Brazil
Manoela Badinelli Vaucher, Camila Ubirajara Silva, Ivana Rosângela Santos Varella, Arthur Yu-Shin Kim, Dimas Alexandre Kliemann
Manoela Badinelli Vaucher, Dimas Alexandre Kliemann, Department of Hepatology, Universidade Federal de Ciências da Saúde de Porto Alegre, Porto Alegre 90050-170, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Manoela Badinelli Vaucher, Department of Medicine, Universidade do Vale do Taquari, Lajeado 95914-014, RS, Brazil
Camila Ubirajara Silva, Department of Application and Monitoring of Injectable Drugs, Hospital Sanatório Partenon, Porto Alegre 90650-000, RS, Brazil
Ivana Rosângela Santos Varella, Department of Epidemiology, Hospital Nossa Senhora da Conceição, Porto Alegre 91350-200, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Arthur Yu-Shin Kim, Department of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, United States
Arthur Yu-Shin Kim, Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, United States
Dimas Alexandre Kliemann, Departament of Infectious Diseases, Hospital Nossa Senhora da Conceição, Porto Alegre 91350-200, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Author contributions: Vaucher MB analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript; Silva CU performed the research; Varella IRS contributed to data analysis and helped perform the research; Kim AYS contributed analytic tools and reviewed the manuscript; and Kliemann DA designed the research study and reviewed the manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Hospitalar Conceição Group (Approval No. 51462421.8.0000.5530).
Informed consent statement: Informed consent was waived, subject to the patient’s commitment to confidentiality.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Data sharing statement: Data can be acquired through the corresponding author.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Manoela Badinelli Vaucher, MD, Doctor, Department of Hepatology, Universidade Federal de Ciências da Saúde de Porto Alegre, Rua Sarmento Leite, 245 Centro Histórico, Porto Alegre 90050-170, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. manuvaucher@hotmail.com
Received: May 27, 2023
Peer-review started: May 27, 2023
First decision: June 14, 2023
Revised: June 19, 2023
Accepted: July 19, 2023
Article in press: July 19, 2023
Published online: August 27, 2023
Core Tip

Core Tip: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is defined as a public health problem by the World Health Organization and since then has defined targets through the HCV elimination. The present study aimed to document the treatment cascade for patients with HCV infection at a hospital in southern Brazil. With the retrospective cohort design, patients diagnosed with HCV infection between 2015 and 2020 were included to create the HCV cascade of care described as five exposure columns according to the stages of HCV care. Variables were related to each step of the cascade to identify obstacles for patients to reach the last step. With the elaboration of the HCV cascade of care using local data, it was possible to stratify and evaluate risk factors associated with losses between each step of the cascade, to inform new strategies to guide elimination efforts in the future.