Abstract
The Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) 2022 Clinical Practice Guideline for the Prevention, Diagnosis, Evaluation, and Treatment of Hepatitis C in Chronic Kidney Disease represents a focused update of the 2018 guideline. This guideline is intended to assist the practitioner caring for patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) and kidney disease, including those who are on dialysis therapy, and kidney transplant candidates and recipients. Topic areas for which recommendations are updated include: Chapter 2: Treatment of HCV infection in patients with CKD; Chapter 4: Management of HCV-infected patients before and after kidney transplantation; and Chapter 5: Diagnosis and management of kidney diseases associated with HCV infection. Previous chapters on the detection and evaluation of HCV in CKD (Chapter 1) and prevention of HCV transmission in hemodialysis units (Chapter 3) have been deemed current, and their content has therefore remained unchanged. Development of this guideline followed an explicit process of evidence review and appraisal. Treatment approaches and guideline recommendations are based on systematic reviews of relevant studies, and appraisal of the quality of the evidence and the strength of recommendations followed the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. Limitations of the evidence are discussed, with areas of future research also presented.