Hepatitis B

A healthcare provider will ask you about your symptoms and physically examine you. They might ask about your health history, any history of liver disease in your family or other factors that might make you more susceptible to viral hepatitis.

As you might not have symptoms or any known risk factors, the only way to find out for sure if you have hepatitis B is by testing your blood. Specific blood tests can tell your healthcare provider all they need to know about your condition, such as:

• If you have an acute or chronic infection.
• If you’ve been infected in the past.
• If you’ve developed immunity to the virus.
• If the infection is interfering with your liver function.

After diagnosis, your provider may want to order additional tests to check how your liver is doing. They might want to look at radiographic images of your liver tissues. In some cases, they might want to take a small sample to examine in the lab (liver biopsy).

Recent exposure

If you’ve only recently been exposed to HBV and the virus is still incubating in your body, it might not show up on a blood test yet. A healthcare provider may not be able to tell right away if you’ve been infected, but they can still treat you preventatively.