TY - JOUR T1 - SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has impacted on patterns of aetiology for acute pancreatitis and management of gallstone pancreatitis in the UK JF - Gut JO - Gut DO - 10.1136/gutjnl-2021-326845 SP - gutjnl-2021-326845 AU - Chris Varghese AU - Manu Nayar AU - Sanjay Pandanaboyana A2 - , Y1 - 2022/01/15 UR - http://gut.bmj.com/content/early/2022/01/16/gutjnl-2021-326845.abstract N2 - We recently published the COVIDPAN study1 and follow-up data2 in Gut, which explored the association between concomitant SARS-CoV-2 infection and acute pancreatitis (AP).1 2 We would like to further report the impact of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on aetiology and management of patients presenting with AP, particularly those with gallstone pancreatitis (GSP) in a cohort of patients who did not have SARS-CoV-2 infection.Between 1 March 2020 and 23 July 2020, 1628 patients presenting with AP were included in the analysis with median age of 54 years (IQR 40–69). Gallstones were the predominant aetiology of AP (43.6%), followed by alcohol-related AP (25.8%) and idiopathic AP (21.5%). The idiopathic group was further followed for 12 months, and after completion of appropriate investigations, 14.4% of the cohort remain to have an idiopathic aetiology. Most patients had mild AP (1244, 77.8%), 256 (16%) had moderate to severe AP and 100 (6.3%) severe AP according to Revised Atlanta Criteria (table 1).View this table:In this windowIn a new windowTable 1 Baseline characteristics by AP severityFollow-up data were available for 1358 patients for a period of 12 months of which 187/1358 patients were readmitted with AP. Seventy-seven (41.2%) patients had alcohol-related pancreatitis and 54 (28.9%) GSP, while 22 (11.8%) patients had idiopathic AP and 4 (2.1%) had post-Endoscopic Retrograde CholangioPancreatography associated AP. One hundred and thirteen of 187 patients were readmitted during the ‘second wave’ of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (after September 2020) with predominantly alcohol-related AP aetiology (49, 43.3%). Patients that were readmitted during the ‘second wave’ more commonly had alcoholic AP compared with the index cohort (43.4% of readmitted cohort vs 23.5% of non-readmitted cohort; p<0.001); however, there were no significant differences in AP severity (p=0.268).In the cohort of 1358 patients with complete follow-up data, 620 (45.7%) presented with GSP, of which only 66 (10.6%) underwent an index cholecystectomy … ER -