The protocol consists of implementing a strategy to contact patients with HCV who have been lost to follow-up. Establish a single model of confidential information management.
Population. From a cohort of patients, a non-probabilistic sampling of subjects meeting the eligibility criteria will be performed
Study Variables - Demographic data: age, gender
HCV-related data:
* Hepatic complications such as hepatocarcinoma, ascites, encephalopathy, variceal hemorrhage and liver transplantation.
* Extrahepatic manifestations such as non-Hodgkin\'s lymphoma, cryoglobulinemia, porphyria cutanea tarda, cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus.
* Previous antiviral treatment with interferon-based or direct antiviral drugs.
Sources of information
* Patient contact: phone call and/or e-mail.
* Review of electronic medical records.
Patient contact strategy:
\- Patients identified as lost to follow-up will be contacted by telephone. Initially 3 calls will be made from Monday to Friday. If the patient is not located, he/she will be called on a Saturday and an e-mail will be sent (if available).
Possible outcomes after the intervention:
* Not contacted despite implemented strategy
* Death
* Treated at another center
* Contacted and candidate for follow-up
Measurement and data logging:
A specific form will be used to record the data, which will later be entered into a computerized database for subsequent analysis of the information. The research physicians who will be blinded will collect the exposure variables included in the survey to the results. Data for each patient will be obtained from the computerized medical record. Those patients with chronic HCV and whose disease course is unknown will be contacted by telephone to evaluate the status of their disease and to offer them, eventually, medical follow-up in our institution.
Ethics and Good Clinical Practices. The study protocol has been developed according to national standards for ethical, legal and juridical requirements, established in the Ministerial Resolution 1480/11 and international standards according to STROBE guidelines and according to ethical criteria of the Helsinki Declaration 2013, Nuremberg Code, Universal Declaration on Human Genome and Human Rights approved by the UNESCO General Conference 1997. As well as according to GCP standards (Good Clinical Practice). The confidentiality of all the data of each individual will be strictly maintained by means of the following strategies: the enrollment of the name, full ID and date of birth will be avoided, and will be replaced by coded data for the identification of the consequent methodologies according to this protocol.
Schedule of activities
* Medical records review phase: 6 months
* Phase of telephone calls: 3 months
* Results evaluation phase 3 months: end of the study and final variable measurements.
Expected results Describing, knowing, understanding the impact of the disease we expect to find a significant number of patients with chronic HCV who are lost to follow-up. Likewise, some of these patients will likely be in follow-up at other institutions.
