[A rare cause of upper digestive tract bleeding--pancreatic papillary adenocarcinoma]

Authors present a rare case of upper digestive bleeding, the etiology of which is represented by a pancreatic papillary adenocarcinoma placed in the body and tail of the pancreas, with bleeding through the Oddi's sphincter, which causes difficult problems of medical and surgical diagnosis and treatment. The patient was known with acute cholecysto-pancreatitis of lithiasic cause, which has been surgically cured in 1977, being under treatment in the last years for the pancreatic injury which had been chronic pancreatitis and for hyperglycemia. The laboratory explorations emphasized a severe anaemia which was identified through upper digestive endoscopy (intermittent active bleeding from the major papilla) confirmed by echo and CT exam (heterogeneously body tissue of 10/8 cm diameter, involving the body and the tail of the pancreas). The medical treatment was complex, including proteic, hematologic, acido-basic, balance of hyperglycemia, and was followed by the surgical intervention consisting in body and tail pancreatico-splenectomy, followed by a postsurgical abscess, which required drainage. The surgical evolution was favorable. 6 months after leaving the hospital, the patient was admitted to medical diseases clinic with the diagnosis of deep right ileofemoral thrombophlebitis, duodenal acute ulcer and acute pneumonia of average right lobe, causing difficult problems of medical treatment. On this pathologic background, the diabetic failure also appears and the echo exam showing multiple secondary hepatic and peritoneal metastatic determinations. In medical literature we only met 13 similar communications, problems of diagnosis and treatment being very much alike to those presented.