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Thousands of people in Washington have a disease that could result in liver failure but don't know it.
About 150,000 people are infected with hepatitis C, a virus that attacks the liver, and most of them will end up with a chronic infection. Doctors call it "the stealth virus" because most people won't have symptoms until it's too late for effective treatment.
Officials at Pasco's Community Health Center La Clinica and the University of Washington hope a new telemedicine initiative called Project ECHO will help save some Tri-Citians before they reach the point of no return.
"This is a tsunami that is going to hit us in the next four to five years," said Dr. John Scott of UW's Allergy and Infections Diseases department. "End-stage liver disease is supposed to quadruple, and the only thing is a new liver. We have a really tight window of opportunity here."
UW is pairing with several clinics around the state, including La Clinica, to offer big city resources that will teach rural physicians to become hepatitis C experts.
Physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other health care workers from participating clinics will log in for a teleconference each Tuesday to talk about their patients -- never identified by name -- with hepatitis C and the challenges in treating them.
They'll discuss local patients with a team of UW experts that includes a hepatology and liver clinician, infectious disease specialist, addiction expert, nurse practitioner and psychiatrist.
Scott said about 80 percent of hepatitis C patients become infected with the blood-borne pathogen through intravenous drug use, and doctors often find themselves tackling addiction and other concurrent health problems along with the virus.
But treatment has advanced significantly in the last few years, and about 50 percent of hepatitis C patients can be cured if they get tested in time, he said.
Dr. Sergio Flores, La Clinica's interim chief medical officer, said the disease sometimes requires specialized treatment, which means patients have to travel elsewhere for treatment, but the telemedicine project will give participating doctors more tools to treat patients locally.
That's especially important for La Clinica patients, many of whom are low-income or uninsured and can't afford to travel, he said.
"In this way they have more access. We are really happy to have the opportunity to participate," Flores said.
All it took for La Clinica to plug into Project ECHO was a PC, webcam and software. The total cost was less than $500.
Scott said UW hopes to expand the project to include discussions of other kinds of chronic illness.
