COVID-19 and Acute Pancreatitis: A Systematic Review of Case Reports and Case Series

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) presents mainly with mild symptoms and involvement of the respiratory system. Acute pancreatitis has also been reported during the course of COVID-19.

Our aim is to review and analyze all reported cases of COVID-19 associated acute pancreatitis, reporting the demographics, clinical characteristics, laboratory and imaging findings, comorbidities and outcomes.

We conducted a systematic search of Pubmed/MEDLINE, SciELO and Google Scholar to identify case reports and case series, reporting COVID-19 associated acute pancreatitis in adults.

There were no ethnicity, gender or language restrictions. The following terms were searched in combination:"COVID-19" OR "SARS-CoV-2" OR "Coronavirus 19" AND "Pancreatic Inflammation" OR "Pancreatitis" OR "Pancreatic Injury" OR "Pancreatic Disease" OR "Pancreatic Damage". Case reports and case series describing COVID-19 associated acute pancreatitis in adults were included. COVID-19 infection was established with testing of nasal and throat swabs using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. The diagnosis of acute pancreatitis was confirmed in accordance to the revised criteria of Atlanta classification of the Acute Pancreatitis Classification Working Group. Exclusion of other causes of acute pancreatitis was also required for the selection of the cases.

The following data were extracted from each report: the first author, year of publication, age of the patient, gender, gastrointestinal symptoms due to acute pancreatitis, respiratory-general symptoms, COVID-19 severity, underlying diseases, laboratory findings, imaging features and outcome.

Finally, we identified and analyzed 31 articles (30 case reports and 1 case series of 2 cases), which included 32 cases of COVID-19 induced acute pancreatitis.

COVID-19 associated acute pancreatitis affected mostly females. The median age of the patients was 53.5 years. Concerning laboratory findings, lipase and amylase were greater than three times the ULN while WBC counts and CRP were elevated in the most of the cases. The most frequent gastrointestinal, respiratory and general symptom was abdominal pain, dyspnea and fever, respectively. The most common imaging feature was acute interstitial edematous pancreatitis and the most frequent comorbidity was arterial hypertension while several patients had no medical history. The outcome was favorable despite the fact that most of the patients experienced severe and critical illness.

Our results are limited by the quality and extent of the data in the reports. More specifically, case series and case reports are unchecked, and while they can recommend hypotheses they are not able to confirm robust associations.

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