Tight glycemic control using an artificial endocrine pancreas may play an important role in preventing infection after pancreatic resection

It is well known that perioperative hyperglycemia is the main cause of infectious complications after surgery. To improve perioperative glycemic control, we wish to highlight and comment on an interesting paper published recently by the Annals of Surgery entitled: "Early postoperative hyperglycemia is associated with postoperative complications after pancreatoduodenectomy (PD)" by Eshuis et al. The authors concluded that early postoperative glucose levels more than 140 mg/dL was significantly associated with complications after PD. Since we recommend that perioperative tight glycemic control (TGC) is an effective method to prevent postoperative complications including surgical site infection after distal, proximal, and total pancreatic resection, we support strongly this conclusion drawn in this article. However, if early postoperative glucose control in patients undergoing PD was administrated by conventional method such as sliding scale approach as described in this article, it is difficult to maintain TGC. Therefore, we introduce a novel perioperative glycemic control using an artificial endocrine pancreas against pancreatogenic diabetes after pancreatic resection including PD.