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UK guidelines for management of acute pancreatitis: is it time to change?

Department of General Surgery, Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust, Aylesbury, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
MrK Gurusamy
Department of General Surgery, Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust, 5 North Drive, Aylesbury HP21 9AN, UK; kurinchi2k@hotmail.com

Keywords: pancreatitis; sphincterotomy; cholangiopancreatography; evidence based-medicine; practice guidelines

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The incidence of acute pancreatitis is increasing in the UK,¹ with a current hospital admission rate of 9.8 per year per 100 000 population.¹ However, there has only been a marginal decrease in the overall one year case fatality rate, from 12.7% in 1975–86 to 11.8% in 1987–98.¹ Gall stones and alcohol are the main aetiological factors for acute pancreatitis.² Nearly 25% of episodes of acute pancreatitis are severe³ and approximately 45% of these are due to gall stones.²

The UK guidelines for the management of acute pancreatitis were formulated and released by the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) in 1998.⁴ MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane databases were searched to find recent evidence in the management of acute pancreatitis. The search terms included pancreatitis (MeSH), sphincterotomy-endoscopic (MeSH), cholangiopancreatography-magnetic-resonance (MeSH), acute NEAR pancreatitis (text), MRCP (text), ERCP AND sphincterotomy (text).

A management plan, modified from the BSG guidelines in light of . . . [Full text of this article]