©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Oct 14, 2017; 23(38): 6927-6930
Published online Oct 14, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i38.6927
Published online Oct 14, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i38.6927
Staging chronic pancreatitis with exocrine function tests: Are we better?
Cosimo Sperti, Lucia Moletta, Department of Surgery, Oncology and Gastroenterology, 3rd Surgical Clinic, University of Padua, 35128 Padua, Italy
Author contributions: Sperti C and Moletta L conceived the study and drafted the manuscript; both authors approved the final version of the article.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
Correspondence to: Cosimo Sperti, Professor, Department of Surgery, Oncology and Gastroenterology, 3rd Surgical Clinic, University of Padua, via giustiniani 2, 35128 Padua, Italy. csperti@libero.it
Telephone: +39-49-8218845 Fax: +39-49-8218821
Received: July 26, 2017
Peer-review started: July 27, 2017
First decision: August 30, 2017
Revised: September 7, 2017
Accepted: September 19, 2017
Article in press: September 19, 2017
Published online: October 14, 2017
Processing time: 81 Days and 15.2 Hours
Peer-review started: July 27, 2017
First decision: August 30, 2017
Revised: September 7, 2017
Accepted: September 19, 2017
Article in press: September 19, 2017
Published online: October 14, 2017
Processing time: 81 Days and 15.2 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: Classification of chronic pancreatitis is useful for planning adequate diagnosis and management of the disease, particularly in the early detection and prevention of related-complications. Recognition of pancreatic exocrine insufficiency is useful for graduating severity of chronic pancreatitis in modern classification systems, and fecal elastase determination appears the better method in term of simplicity and sensitivity to stage exocrine function of the pancreas. However, sensitivity of elastase-1 is low in early stage of chronic pancreatitis, and new diagnostic tools or combination of different procedures are needed to better stage pancreatic function.