Three things usually come before the actual start of any clinical treatment for hepatitis C. Doctors usually have to get some things out of the way first before they can fully get into gear and start with the treatment of their patients who are suffering from hepatitis C. These are unavoidable, considering they are aimed at confirming that the diagnosis of hepatitis C that was made is accurate. You might make the mistake of giving medications for hepatitis C to patients who are suffering from tuberculosis, malaria, or something simpler. It works the other way around, too. You might be giving weak medication to patients who actually require more potent hepatitis C medication, thereby not allowing them to be cured. Such tricky circumstances would entail some things to be done by the doctors in order to reduce the risks of misdiagnosis and compromising the ensuing treatment that may very well save the very life of the patient. The first thing that doctors usually do before they start with the clinical treatments for hepatitis C is to record the patient's medical history. This is where the patient simply explains what he or she is feeling to the doctor, with the doctor recording what he or she hears from the patient. Based on this sharing, the doctor would weigh things and see if there is anything that points even vaguely to the possibilities of hepatitis C. If his suspicions warrant tests, he'd have them ordered. Hepatitis C symptoms are not what you'd call distinct or unique to the condition. That is why doctors often have trouble at this stage because the symptoms could be identified with various other conditions. The doctor would have to make some remote connections in order to properly identify the condition. Doctors would then normally suggest that their patients, once they've exhibited a certain permutation of symptoms that may or may not raise signals for hepatitis C, undergo further lab tests. Now the next thing that is often seen to take place before the start of any hepatitis C treatment is serology. This is blood testing and it takes place in several stages. The object of the first stage is not the detection of the hepatitis C virus per se. The body, in response to a hepatitis C attack, would produce antibodies to combat them. The purpose to the lab tests is to look for these antibodies. If the tests reveal a large number of these antibodies, it could only mean one thing: the patient has hepatitis C. Next, serology would now move on to trying to calculate the actual hepatitis C viral load in the body. Biopsy is the third thing that is usually performed before the start of any clinical treatment for hepatitis C. This is necessitated by the fact that hepatitis C can damage the liver. The purpose of the biopsy is to assess whatever damage has already been done to the liver by hepatitis C, if any. An indication of liver damage would then lead to the doctor trying to assess the extent of the damage. A liver biopsy is admittedly risky, but in some cases, it becomes absolutely essential: especially if the patient is already showing signs of liver cirrhosis. To find even more relating to hepatitis treatment. Visit http://www.e-hepatitis-c.com/
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