/ : a good article about CP: prognosis and diagnosis

[Guest guest]

Hi and ,

http://springerlink.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?w

asp=53flxptxyq4j85k3jmfk & referrer=parent & backto=issue,1,20;jo

urnal,14,65;linkingpublicationresults,1:101564,1

I ran into this article yesterday while searching for information

concerning life span with CP. Although the data are collected

and reported for CP in Japan, there is very good information here

that reflects data taken from a world-wide point of view.

Specifically on page 323 of the pdf file has this information that

may interest you:

" A multicenter investigation in seven hospitals in six countries

including 2,015 patients with CP revealed that the mortality rate

was 3.6 fold higher than in patients without pancreatitis. Overall

survival at 10 years was 70% (95% CI, 68-73%) and that at 20

years was 45% (95% CI, 41-49%) in patients with CP, as

compared with 93% and 65% , respectively, in patients without

pancreatitis. Lowenfels et al, demonstrated that age at

diagnosis, smoking and drinking were major predictors of

mortality in patients with CP. Although data on the mortality rate

in CP are difficult to interpret, because etiology and mean

observation times vary from study to study, patients with CP have

a reduced life expectancy. Three studies with comparitively

similar observations times (median, 6.3 - 9.8 years) revealed a

general death rate of 21 - 35%. "

This article also tries to objectify the diagnosis of CP which I

thought may interest - in light of her recent question. The

Japanese pancreas society has established guidelines for the

staging of CP and have divided it into " probably CP " vs " definite

CP " based on a number of diagnostic criteria. But one quote

which sums up the whole CP story is this (page 316):

" Methods for diagnosing chronic pancreatitis differ greatly, and

no accepted criteria for the diagnosis of CP are known. "

There are also two nice diagrams that show the clinical course

of CP and the subsets of the clinical course of CP in alcoholic vs

non-alcoholic CP.

Anyways, I thought that this article was very relevant to some of

the issues currently under discussion.

(if anyone is unable to access this article, email me and I will

send it to you as an attachment - I have it downloaded on my

hard drive as a pdf file).

Laurie