[Acute pancreatitis: the value of ultrasonography in its prognosis]

As acute pancreatitis is a disease of unpredictable outcome, we wanted to use an available diagnostic method such as ultrasonography, in order to establish the prognosis of this problem. There are some published papers using CT scan as prognostic value of this disease but none about ultrasonography. We evaluated 34 patients with clinical diagnosis of acute pancreatitis based on abdominal pain, nausea, vomits and absence of abdominal sounds plus an elevation of amylases of at least three times above the normal value. An abdominal ultrasound was performed at admission and every 4 days or even sooner if complications were suspected. Acute pancreatitis was classified by clinic and ultrasound in mild, moderate and severe. From 34 patients studied, 27 were clinically and by ultrasound correlated (79%) giving a sensibility of 100% and a specificity of 85%, without false positives. There were some cases in which ultrasound detected abnormalities before clinical manifestations, so a close follow up was done and this allowed us to be ready if any complications showed up. Follow up with ultrasound examination was very useful, permitted us to detect early complications with or without clinical manifestations and also emphasized that a single ultrasound examination is not enough as a prognostic or diagnostic method.