Pathology of autoimmune pancreatitis and tumor-forming pancreatitis

The most frequently recognized presentation of autoimmune pancreatitis (AIP) is that mimicking pancreatic cancer. It is also known that at some stage during the disease process chronic pancreatitis clinically presents as a tumorous swelling, often suspected of being a carcinoma. In Japan, this stage has also been proposed clinically to be tumor-forming pancreatitis. Hence, tumor-forming pancreatitis shows at least two distinct types: a reparative process for centriductal acute inflammation with a background of chronic pancreatitis, which is considered to have given rise to the tumor at some stage of chronic pancreatitis, and a lymphoplasmacytic infiltration with lymphoid and fibrous proliferation in normal pancreatic tissue, which corresponds to autoimmune pancreatitis. These tumorous lesions may be changeable along the disease process.