Then, often by chance, he or she gets a hep C test which turns out to be positive. This comes as a relief. The implications of this situation are quite clear to me. Several years can be wasted before the diagnosis is reached. Moreover, I would not be surprised if there are symptomatic people who still have not happened to have received a HCV test and, therefore, are still undiagnosed.
People can slip through the net even in the presence of warning signals.
On top of this, people can be left feeling bitter, frustrated and disillusioned with the medical system. All this could be avoided if better information would filter through primary care more widely. There is a mounting literature which shows that HCV can produce a wide range of symptoms, that there are a number of conditions which are associated to HCV and that hep C can have a big impact on quality of life. An interesting paper by Dr Foster also shows that the degree of reduction in quality of life is not correlated to clinical indicators. One can be highly symptomatic even if one has a very low liver function, a low fibrotic stage or no fibrosis at all.