Hepatitis Masterclass 2022

In recent years, management of patients with liver-related diseases has been revolutionized by improvements in diagnostic techniques as well as by the availability of new therapeutic options.
The development of potent oral antivirals against hepatitis B (HBV) and C (HCV) viruses led to improvements in chronic viral hepatitis courses, which translated into reduced liver-related complications and improved patients’ survival. The WHO goal of HBV and HCV elimination by 2030 represents the more ambitious large-scale clinical endpoint of the last years. For the first-time novel therapies against HDV have become available, opening the way to new medical challenges.        
Nevertheless, liver-related complications still represent a major burden affecting outcomes and survival of patients with cirrhosis. Current efforts are focused toward development of personalized management approaches with optimization of diagnostic, therapeutic and surveillance algorithms. Non-invasive tools have gained a leading role in the identification of patients at increased risk of liver-related complications; but several efforts are deemed necessary in order to find therapeutic strategies able to impact on survival of patients with more advanced liver diseases.
Despite recent and profound changes in the epidemiology of liver diseases, Hepatologists are going to tackle new challenges, trying to achieve increasingly ambitious clinical goals.