Hospitals and clinics, beginning to feel the pinch from treating rising numbers of hepatitis C patients, are relying on nurses more and more to help stem the tide. Intravenous drug use accounts for 60 percent of HCV transmission, but sexual contact, transfusion of infected blood prior to 1992 when the blood supply began to be routinely screened for the virus and perinatal infection are other transmission sources. The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 3.9 million Americans have chronic hepatitis C, but most don t know it.
Infected people can unknowingly transmit the virus to others.
Patients with hepatitis C are at risk for chronic liver diseases up to as long as two or more decades following their initial infection. About 12,000 people die of hepatitis C each year, and the CDC predicts that number will increase to 38,000 by 2010. The state and the counties need to have some money to deal with this problem. Since September, Cinda Clark, APN, RN, has seen only hepatitis C patients at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital, one of Houston s largest public hospitals, and at the Texas Liver Center, which is associated with Hermann Hospital. Clark will also see patients at a new liver clinic expected to open at Ben Taub Hospital, in Harris County, within the next four months.