[Clinical, morphological and biochemical prognostic factors in acute pancreatitis]

Acute pancreatitis is a potentially lethal disease and mortality depends on severity. The clinical spectrum of acute pancreatitis depends greatly on whether or not pancreatic necrosis is present and to what extend. The effectiveness of any treatment is related to the ability to early predict severity, but there is still no ideal predictive system or biochemical marker. An early enthusiasm over several biochemical markers has diminished because of the costs and impracticability of routine use. Undoubtedly, inflammatory mediators do appear capable of offering greater accuracy, speed and flexibility than older systems but they still require more improvement. Nowadays, prediction of acute pancreatitis severity is based on compilation of methods--clinical assessment, use of multifactor score system, measurement of biochemical markers and computed tomography.