Physicians discuss how acute pancreatitis is diagnosed in patients who meet at least 2 of the 3 following criteria: 1) displaying the typical symptoms of pancreatitis; 2) having elevated blood levels of the enzymes lipase or amylase; and 3) having findings of pancreatitis from ultrasound or CAT scans.
My son tell me a bit about acute pancreatitis and its diagnosis had how is that disease process diagnosed so acute pancreatitis is a condition where the symptoms are making us think could this patient have pancreatitis so first they want to have the symptoms that are typical of pancreatitis the higher up in the belly which we call epigastric pain with or without
The vomiting so having that and then you need another criteria to make two out of the three diagnostic criteria so these other ones we look for are whether the patients have lab elevations of lipase or emily’s and these are the pancreatic enzymes that get elevated in the blood and they are usually three times the upper limit of normal for that lab and then whether
They have imaging findings of pancreatitis on ultrasound or cat scans so usually a patient who has two out of these three criterias from the symptoms and lab and imaging does have a cute picture titus tell me about timing of imaging in acute pancreatitis is everyone getting imaging is it an ultrasound is it a ct scan so that’s a great question and we have found
That using an ultrasound at least for a first attack presentation could help a confirm the diagnosis be looking for some of the anatomic things that you could find or even diagnose gallstone pancreatitis in that case where the child will benefit from a specific therapy to treat that gold stone disease for instance by taking their gallbladder out we don’t have
Imaging in every case of pancreatitis if the child for instance is known to have acute pancreatitis and this was just another attack and we know it’s going to be a one to two days just the usual recovery we try not to use advanced imaging like computed tomography or ct scan or mri which are the magnetic resonance imaging and every attack because these are not
Usually needed especially if you have a pink rajadis that is mild i’m going to resolve on its own but when the cases get complicated we sometimes do need to use those kind of more specialized imaging to look for those complications and perhaps intervene when the child needs it truly important to recognize that we really don’t need imaging on every episode of
Acute pancreatitis but really it plays a role to help guide therapy if we’re really concerned about a complex course development of complications i agree and it definitely makes sense for us as providers to think which imaging am i getting and depending on the timing of the presentation also early in the disease you start with an ultrasound and you kind of delay
The more specialized one through on the hospitalization until a later date or day if the child doesn’t resolve on their own as expected
Transcribed from video
How is acute pancreatitis diagnosed? By Animated Pancreas Patient
