The Healthcare Burden Imposed by Liver Disease in Aging Baby Boomers

Abstract

The Baby Boomer generation is composed of 78 million Americans who are just beginning to reach their retirement years. Most Boomers have at least one chronic health problem, and these significantly increase the expense of providing medical care. Liver disease is the 12th most common cause of death in the United States, representing a relatively small portion of overall healthcare costs compared with cardiovascular disease and malignancy. Nonetheless, hepatitis C and fatty liver disease are more common in the Boomers and may play a more dominant role as they age. As a consequence, primary liver cancer is likely to become more prevalent. As with most chronic illnesses, prevention rather than disease management is likely to have the greatest impact. For those already afflicted by chronic liver disease, recognition and treatment can reduce the incidence of late complications, as was clearly demonstrated with chronic hepatitis B and C. Perhaps obesity is the greatest threat to our future health, and fatty liver disease, although likely preventable, will probably become the disease that fills the waiting rooms of future hepatologists.

Improvement of health-related quality of life and work productivity in chronic hepatitis C patients with early and advanced fibrosis treated with ledipasvir and sofosbuvir

“…Since the discovery of hepatitis C virus (HCV) in 1989, there has been an explosion of knowledge about the molecular biology, pathogenicity and infectivity of this virus [1][2][3]. Our knowledge about the clinical impact of HCV has also evolved from estimating that only very few individuals with HCV infection will develop advanced liver disease to the current understanding that HCV is one of the most significant causes of chronic liver disease, cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma and liver failure [4][5].…”

MR relaxometry of the liver: significant elevation of T1 relaxation time in patients with liver cirrhosis

“…A broad spectrum of hepatopathies can induce hepatic fibrosis, which may subsequently progress to liver cirrhosis (LC). If detected at an early stage, liver fibrosis may be reversible and the incidence of late complications such as end-stage liver disease or primary liver cancer can be decreased [2][3][4][5][6]. Liver biopsy remains the best available diagnostic procedure to provide a definite diagnosis despite limitations such as its invasiveness, sampling error, and the inter-and intra-observer variation of interpretation [7,8].…”

Economic and Quality-of-Life Implications of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

“…There is a remarkable paucity of data addressing economic issues in patients with NAFLD [16,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. Our search identified six articles related to the economics of NAFLD (four for the general population, one in the C65 years old or medically disabled population) (Table 1) [20,23,[30][31][32][33].…”

“…This time period was chosen as it potentially includes the years that the baby boomer generation (born 1945-1964) will age into the Medicare system [23][24][25].…”