The current standard of staging Hepatitis C patients is through liver biopsies. There are many issues with liver biopsies including accuracy, cost, injury, and how often they can be performed. There is tremendous need for non-invasive methods for staging liver disease and this paper will delve into some of the systems that have already been developed. Many of these new methods are also expensive and contain proprietary algorithms.
Developed by Steven Finkbine as part of his doctoral program, the Alchemist Lab Formula is based on inexpensive and routinely performed blood tests which are combined with the patient's age. The result is a simple number that directly corresponds to a specific stage of liver damage.
This formula is more accurate than the FibroSure HCV — which uses a proprietary algorithm and a panel of expensive tests.