ERCP in acute pancreatitis: What takes place in routine clinical practice?

Table 1 Indications for endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography in the 344 patients with acute pancreatitis according to the etiology of the disease¹

	Biliary acute pancreatitis (N = 320)		Non-biliary acute pancreatitis (N = 24)		Overall (N = 344)
	n	Frequency	n	Frequency	n	Frequency
Suspicion of common bile duct stones	289	89.4	17	70.8	306	89
Jaundice	153	47.8	-	-	153	44.5
Clinical worsening of acute pancreatitis	45	14.1	4	16.7	49	14.2
Cholangitis	21	6.6	-	-	21	6.1
Disruption of the main pancreatic duct	-	-	2	8.3	2	0.6
Suspicion of malignancy	-	-	1	4.2	1	0.3

¹More than one indication may be present in the same patient.

Table 2 Distribution of different techniques used for biliary sphincterotomy according to the severity of the acute pancreatitis

	Mild acute pancreatitis (N = 269)		Severe acute pancreatitis (N = 26)		P value
	n	Frequency	n	Frequency
Standard sphincterotomy	219	81.4	23	88.5	0.531
Precut	21	7.8	2	7.7
Standard sphincterotomy + Precut	29	10.8	1	3.8

Table 3 Number of cases and respective frequency of patients who underwent endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography in the two Italian surveys

	Survey 1996-200021			Present survey 2001-2003
	Overall population (N = 1005)	Mild AP (n = 753)	Severe AP (n = 252)	Overall population (N = 1173)	Mild AP (N = 1006)	Severe AP (N = 167)
	n / N (%)	n / N (%)	n / N (%)	n / N (%)	n / N (%)	n/ N (%)
Interventional ERCP	646/1005 (64.3%)	482/753 (64.0%)	164/252 (65.1%)	344/1173 (29.3%)	308/1006 (30.6%)	36/167 (21.6%)
Interventional ERCP within 72 h	293/646 (45.4%)	227/482 (47.1%)	66/164 (40.2%)	89/344 (25.9%)	69/308 (22.4%)	20/36 (55.6%)

ERCP: endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography; AP: alute pancreatitis.