A new method: measurement of pancreas volume in computerised tomography as a diagnostic guide for acute pancreatitis

To investigate whether measuring pancreas volume with abdominal tomography in patients with severe abdominal pain can predict acute pancreatitis.

The case-control study was conducted at Adnan Menderes University from January 1, 2015, to January 1, 2017, and comprised patients who were diagnosed with acute pancreatitis. Pancreas volume measurements of patients and control group were made with Telemed Ekinoks software using freehand technique. Presence of a correlation between pancreas volume and pancreatitis was found in patients aged <57 years and a cut-off value was calculated for pancreatitis in this particular patient group.

Of the 183 subjects, 132(72%) were patients with a mean age of 59.6±16.5 years, and 51(28%) were controls with a mean age of 55.8±18.6 years (p=0.170). The difference between the groups in terms of pancreas volume was significant (p<0.001). There was a negative correlation between age and pancreas volume among the patients (p<0.001), the correlation was not significant among the controls (p=0.898). Among the subjects aged <57 years, the cut-off value was calculated at 95.055, and sensitivity to pancreas volume was 70.91% while specificity was 82.14%. Positive predictive value was 88.6%.

High pancreas volume with pancreatitis was observed in patients aged <57 years.