Prognosis of chronic hepatitis

The morbidity by viral hepatitis within the municipal and rural district of Eisenhüttenstadt with 66 211 inhabitants from 1960 t0 1970 amounts to 19.45 +/- 1.06%. The transition into chronic hepatitis appears in 5.5 per cent in 1 283 controlled cases of illness. Contrary to the acute viral hepatitis the numbers of illness by chronic hepatitis are increasing with proceeding age (0.3 per cent up to 14 per cent). The prognosis of viral hepatitis is altogether favorable. 84.1 per cent are healing completely primarily without any subsequences and 4.4 per cent are followed by defective states. The chronic persisting hepatitis heals in more than the half of the cases, mostly after a duration of two till five years of illness. The tendency to heal is significantly stronger in children and adolescents than in adults. The chronic aggressive hepatitis has an unfavorable prognosis. In the development of the cirrhosis of the liver (0.5 per cent) additional noxes are playing a role. The alcohol shows an unfavorable influence on the course of the illness (0.7 per cent). A hyperbilirubinemia does not appear essentially more frequently than in the normal population. The prospective character of the study in not selected patients imparts to these findings a real epidemiological sentential power.