China has published its first professional guidelines on how to prevent and treat hepatitis B virus.

The current arrival of more and more anti-viral drugs onto the medical market has brought feelings of both hope and chaos due to the relatively limited knowledge Chinese doctors have on the treatment of hepatitis B, according to a report of Monday's China Daily.

Irregular treatment is inflicting heavy economic burdens on patients, hepatitis experts said.

Zhuang Hui, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering from Peking University and director of the Society of Hepatitis Diseases, attached to the Chinese Medical Association, was quoted by the newspaper as saying that a professional treatment guideline is very important for both medical workers and patients.

More than 80 medical experts from the Society of Hepatitis Disease and the Infectious Diseases Society under the Chinese Medical Association have spent a year working on the guidelines, with the help of advice from more than 1,000 clinical hepatitis doctors around the country.

The guidelines detail the effects of major anti-viral drugs with recommendations of the most appropriate treatments.

"However, it should be noted that the guidelines only offer advise to doctors in order to aid them when treating hepatitis B, They are not an obligatory clinical rule. They should work out the best forms of treatment based on their own clinical observations of individual cases," said Zhuang.

The consistency and success of treatment provided to hepatitis B patients by expert practitioners in this field are worrying, according to Weng Xinhua, director of the Society of Infectious and Parasitic Diseases attached to the Chinese Medical Association.

Recent surveys conducted by China Foundation of Hepatitis Prevention and Control and No 302 Hospital of PLA showed that 45 percent of anti-viral specialists were not fully aware of standard anti-viral treatment procedures.

In addition, only 19 percent of hepatitis B patients were sticking to their prescribed long-term anti-viral treatments.

Currently many doctors are treating hepatitis B carriers with anti-viral drugs that can lead to viral variations, thus failing to successfully treat patients.

Inconsistent treatment often brings unfavorable effects to patients, who fail to receive successful treatment at a high cost both economically and in terms of health, Went said.

At present, hepatitis B is among the top five infectious diseases and the top five killer diseases, according to the Ministry of Health.

Source: China Daily