EMOttawa - By Kevin Guo - May 11, 2023
Acute pancreatitis is one of the most common gastroenterology conditions we see in the emergency department with a prevalence of 110-140 cases per 100,000 population. (1) At The Ottawa Hospital alone, we saw over an average of 1 case per day over the last year. Unfortunately, a lot of what we do in the emergency department is still following the dogma of traditional teaching. New evidence has been arising in the recent years about how we could be improving the ED management of acute pancreatitis.
Recall the diagnostic criteria for acute pancreatitis (>2/3):
- Abdominal pain consistent with acute pancreatitis
- Elevated amylase or lipase more than 3 times upper limit of normal
- Characteristic findings of acute pancreatitis on imaging
