There are more than eighty percent of all hepatitis C patients that go on to develop chronic hepatitis C. In such cases, there is but one sure way to see the extent of your liver damage because of chronic hepatitis: a biopsy of the liver. This procedure is of the highest importance because it can determine the degree of the liver inflammation, the stage of your hepatitis. Knowing all these information about hepatitis then makes it that much easier for the doctors to prescribe you the proper treatment you should take for you hepatitis. Some of the hepatitis patients may find out after this procedure that they do not need treatment, but most of them will need it.

A biopsy is a procedure that it is used in many medical conditions, including hepatitis C. The doctors takes a very, very tiny part of your liver, using a special needle and analyzes that part under a microscope. After this, the damage that hepatitis has done to your liver is determined and treatment for hepatitis may start. Nowadays, there are more treatments for hepatitis C than there were a couple of years back. In 2004 another combination of drugs was recommended for treating hepatitis C. Ribavirin and interferon alpha are some of the newest available treatments for hepatitis C. This combination, however, is used for the people that suffer from moderate hepatitis C. It can also be used for more severe ceases of hepatitis, like chronic hepatitis C. More than half of the hepatitis C patients that have used this treatment were pleased with the result. The infection was cleared and furthermore after about six months form the end of the hepatitis treatment, doctors did not detect any hepatitis virus in the
patients blood. The rate of success that this hepatitis C treatment has is also according to what genotype you are suffering from. In cases of genotype 1, more than forty percent of the hepatitis patients are cured, but when it comes to genotype 2 and 3, more than seventy percent of the hepatitis C patients are cured.

The duration of the hepatitis C treatment depends on what genotype you have. If you are suffering from the genotype 2 or 3 of hepatitis, then this hepatitis treatment will probably last up to six months. In the rest of the hepatitis cases, the duration of the hepatitis treatment is somewhere around one year.