A fortuitously controlled study of steroid therapy in acute viral hepatitis: II. Follow-up examination of 202 patients

Abstract Follow-up physical examination and liver function tests were performed in 202 patients one to seven years after their recovery from acute viral hepatitis. They had been treated in either of two hospitals in which treatment was comparable except that steroids were used frequently (89.5 per cent) at one (sixty-three patients) and less often (16.5 per cent) at the other (139 patients). Chronic hepatitis was found in six of eleven elderly women whose acute hepatitis had been mild and protracted. In other patients chronic hepatitis developed more rarely (1 per cent). The incidence of chronic hepatitis detected was about the same regardless of the interval between the second examination and recovery from the acute disease. The over-all incidence of chronic liver disease was 6 per cent in the "steroid hospital" and 7 per cent in the "control hospital," but the latter figure was only 3 per cent when cases of fatty liver and nonspecific parenchymal changes were excluded. Subjective symptoms were also distributed equally between the hospitals, 62 and 60 per cent at the steroid and control hospitals, respectively, and bore little relation to the incidence of chronic liver disease.