Pancreatic Disorders News

SAN DIEGO — If applied to the previous decade, the 2015 AGA guidelines on managing pancreatic cysts would have resulted in 60% fewer patients referred for surgery, according to a study presented at Digestive Disease Week 2016.

SAN DIEGO —  A blinded histopathology review of pancreatic tissue from 16 deceased individuals highlighted differences between diabetic exocrine pancreatopathy and chronic pancreatitis, according to a presenter at DDW 2016.

SAN DIEGO — In this exclusive video from DDW 2016, Isaac Raijman, MD, from Baylor College of Medicine, CHI St. Luke’s Hospital, and Greater Houston Gastroenterology, discusses how advances in digital cholangioscopy and pancreatoscopy will positively impact the management of patients with complex biliary and pancreatic disorders.

Rectal indomethacin did not prevent post-endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography pancreatitis in a randomized controlled trial.

Pseudocyst size is less important than the clinical context of the patient. How certain are you that the cystic lesion noted on CT scan or ultrasound imaging is actually a pseudocyst? For instance, a middle-aged female patient with vague abdominal symptoms who is found to have a cystic mass of any size on abdominal imaging is much more likely to have a cystic neoplasm if there has been no antecedent history of pancreatitis. Likewise, patients with intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN) or mucinous cystadenoma of the pancreas (a premalignant condition) can occasionally present with obstructive pancreatitis. The presence of a cystic lesion at the onset of pancreatitis is crucial to distinguishing a neoplastic condition from a true pseudocyst, which is the consequence of a ductal disruption and the body’s containment of that disruption by a wall of inflammatory and fibrous tissue.

Researchers did not observe adverse associations between prior bariatric surgery and in-hospital mortality, development of organ failure or an escalation of health care resource use in patients hospitalized with acute pancreatitis, according to the results of a retrospective study.

Boston Scientific has launched the Axios Stent and Electrocautery Enhanced Delivery System for the endoscopic management of pancreatic pseudocysts and some types of walled-off pancreatic necrosis, according to a press release.

Early initiation of enteral feeding in hospitalized patients with acute pancreatitis was found to be associated with reduced length of stay, according to study results presented at the Society of Hospital Medicine Annual Meeting.

An increasing level of obesity was found to be associated with higher mortality among Western patients with pancreatic cancer in a systematic review and meta-analysis.

In this guest commentary, Marcovalerio Melis, MD, FACS, discusses irreversible electroporation for locally advanced pancreatic cancer, following a presentation on the topic delivered at the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium by Robert C.G. Martin, MD, PhD, FACS, from University of Louisville. Melis is an associate professor of surgery at NYU Langone's Perlmutter Cancer Center and serves as chief of surgical oncology at New York Harbor Healthcare System VAMC.