Acute pancreatitis as an early indicator of pancreatic head carcinoma

The purpose of this study was to determine if AP is an indicator of pancreatic head carcinoma, and if it is associated with disease stage.

A retrospective review of the medical records of 154 patients with pancreatic head cancer who were treated from January 2006 to December 2011 was conducted. Patients were divided into 2 groups: those with AP and those without. Data extracted and compared including age, gender, the presence of AP, and laboratory results.

This study included 103 males (67.8%) and 49 females (32.9%), with an age range of 38-83 years. The frequency of main pancreatic duct dilation (MPD) was higher in patients without pancreatitis than in patients with AP (P = 0.018). There were 18, 14, 4, and 2 patients in the AP group, and 34, 26, 31, and 23 patients in nonpancreatitis group with stage I, II, III, and IV disease, respectively, (P = 0.007). The median length of tumors in AP group was 3.41 cm, and that in the non-pancreatitis group was 4.15 cm (P = 0.028).No correlation was found between disease stage and the presence of MPD dilatation (P = 0.646). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.66 (P = 0.003; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.568-0.753) indicated that AP itself was insufficient for predicting disease stage.

AP is an early manifestation of pancreatic head carcinoma, although the presence of AP is insufficient to predict disease stage.