Clinical and CT Imaging Features of Chronic Pancreatitis: A Cross-Sectional Study From Vietnam

Chronic pancreatitis (CP) is a progressive inflammatory condition with insidious and nonspecific symptoms; however, data on its clinical and computed tomography (CT) based characteristics in Vietnam remain limited. This study aimed to characterize the clinical features and contrast-enhanced CT findings of Vietnamese patients with CP and to assess the association between clinical manifestations and morphological severity using the Cambridge classification.

We conducted a cross-sectional study of patients diagnosed with CP at a tertiary hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Demographics, risk factors, clinical symptoms, and CT imaging characteristics were recorded. Morphologic severity was graded using the Cambridge system. A total of 160 patients were included; 85.6% were male, with a median age of 50 years. Alcohol-related disease was the predominant etiology (62.5%). Notably, 24.4% had disease onset before 35 years of age, and 33.1% had no prior history of acute pancreatitis. Abdominal pain was the most common symptom (87.5%), followed by weight loss and diabetes mellitus. CT imaging demonstrated advanced structural abnormalities, with pancreatic calcifications in 85.0% of patients, ductal dilatation in 73.1%, and 92.5% classified as Cambridge grade 4. Within this predominantly advanced-stage cohort, no statistically significant association was detected between clinical manifestations and CT-based morphological severity.

In this tertiary-center CT-based cohort from Vietnam, CP was characterized by heterogeneous clinical manifestations and predominantly advanced CT abnormalities. The absence of a detectable symptom-severity association in this advanced-stage cohort supports the need for more comprehensive diagnostic approaches to enable earlier recognition of CP.