Changing role of surgery in necrotizing pancreatitis: a single-center experience

The incidence of acute pancreatitis varies from 5 to 80 per 100,000 inhabitants throughout the world. Recognizing the natural course of severe acute pancreatitis a multidisciplinary approach had become the standard. The strategy of postponing surgical intervention was implemented in the treatment algorithm several years ago.

A retrospective analysis of patient data from two five-year periods. The first period was from 01/1992 to 12/1997 (group 1), the second period from 10/2001 to 12/2006 (group 2).

In this study, we retrospectively analyzed the impact of this approach on the outcome of our patients with necrotizing pancreatitis. The time interval between onset of disease and first necrosectomy was in the mean 19.5 days in patients of group 1 and 30 days in group 2 (p = 0.015). In group 1, 45/78 patients (57%) were operated on during the first 14 days compared to 8/32 patients (25%; p = 0.002) in group 2. The mortality was 41% in group 1 and 18% in group 2 (p = 0.026). There was also a statistically significant decrease in mortality when first necrosectomy was postponed after day 29 (p = 0.015).

Our results are in line with several other analyses suggesting that the strategy of postponing surgery in patients with necrotizing pancreatitis is associated with a decreased mortality.