Prevalence of acute pancreatitis in Iraq : pilot study

الملخص EN

Objective: Acute pancreatitis is an acute inflammation of the pancreas, when severe associated with significant mortality.

Various studies reported various incidence of the disease, with various aetiologies.

In western society, alcohol abuse is the most common cause, in The Middle East, gallstones to be blamed.

There is no previous study dealt with this uprising entity in IRAQ which was our great motivation to carry on this study, in an effort to put cornerstone for future studies.

The study was constructed to assess the incidence of the disease, the patterns of clinical presentation, the etiological factors and the factors predicting the severity of the attacks and to come with recommendations to reduce mortality rates in those patients.

Methods : This is a prospective study conducted at Baghdad teaching hospital from January 2008 till December 2010.

All patients whom had been admitted with diagnosis of acute pancreatitis included in the study.

Data analysed including demographics, clinical presentation, biochemical investigations, imaging studies with resulted outcomes.

Results: One hundred twelve patients were approved to have acute pancreatitis.

Main etiological factor was gallstones with female to male ratio of 2:1.

Periampullary tumour found to be the aetiology in 10%, 26 patients have severe attacks with most common cause to be gallstones, with 60% of them having medical co-morbidities.

Twenty two of the patients with severe attacks had organ failure revealing a direct relationship.

The mortality was increasing in number over years but with fixed rate around 10% due to increase in number of patients.

Conclusions : The incidence rate of acute pancreatitis (AP) being doubled every year during the study, hence the need for national management guidelines.

Adapting the rule of laparoscopic cholecystectomy for gallstones pancreatitis within the same admission, or as soon as appropriate is an important factor.

Tumours played significant etiological factor which require further studies to look into possible aetiologies.

Severe attacks have been associated with organ failure.

Mortality mainly related to age more than 55 years, male gender and CT severity index C and D indicating complicated attacks.