Selective screening of hospitalized patients for the presence of asymptomatic hepatitis B virus carriage:...

Review of all hepatitis B surface antigen-positive patients reported to the county health department over the past 3 years showed that 60% of patients had been diagnosed at our hospital, which serves an inner city, predominantly black, indigent population. Sera from 524 adult patients admitted to the hospital were prospectively collected and tested for hepatitis B surface antigen, eight (1.5%) of which were antigen-positive. Census tract data allowed us to perform selective screening of sera from 95 other patients who were subsequently hospitalized and deemed "high risk" for hepatitis B infection. Nine of 95 (9.5%) selectively screened samples were positive for hepatitis B surface antigen, which represented a significantly higher rate of antigen carriage (P less than 0.0001) in hospitalized patients from "high risk" areas than that found in the general population screen. The methodology presented herein may be useful in providing a means of identifying hepatitis B surface antigen-positive patients from adult, urban, indigent care populations.