[Latest advances in chronic pancreatitis]

This article summarizes some of the recent and clinically relevant advances in chronic pancreatitis. These advances mainly concern the early diagnosis of the disease, the prediction of the fibrosis degree of the gland, the evaluation of patients with asymptomatic hyperenzimemia, the medical and surgical treatment of abdominal pain and the knowledge of the natural history of the autoimmune pancreatitis. In patients with indetermined EUS findings of chronic pancreatitis, a new endoscopic ultrasound examination in the follow-up is of help to confirm or to exclude the disease. Smoking, number of relapses, results of pancreatic function tests and EUS findings allow predicting the degree of pancreatic fibrosis in patients with chronic pancreatitis. Antioxidant therapy has shown to be effective in reducing pain secondary to chronic pancreatitis, although the type and optimal dose of antioxidants remains to be elucidated. Development of intestinal bacterial overgrowth is frequent in patients with chronic pancreatitis, but its impact on symptoms is unknown and deserves further investigations. Finally, autoimmune pancreatitis relapses in about half of the patients with either type 1 or type 2 disease; relapses frequently occur within the first two years of follow-up.