Question: what are the statistics of surviving with hepatitis c ?

Bethany Dearlove answered on 20 Jun 2014:

Good question! There are two main types of hepatitis C infection: acute infections are those that clear spontaneously (as if you’d never had it), and chronic infections are long lasting and are the ones that can cause liver damage. There’s not much data on acute infections because they often don’t show symptoms before the virus clears to know it was there, but it’s estimated that about 75-85% cases go on to be chronic.

There are lots of factors that effect how successful treatment of chronic disease is, including according to the dose given, strain of hepatitis C, gender and race of the patient, age when infection occurred and what damage has already been done to the liver. The treatment itself is pretty rough (side effects of treatment include fever, muscle pains, weight problems, hair loss, anaemia, and depression) so some patients stop taking it too. However treatment is successful in up to 80% of cases, and 60% of patients survive for at least 10 years after diagnosis. As we know more about the disease, limit transmission, and become more effective at treating not only the disease but the damage it causes, this rate of survival will increase.