Abstract
Introduction: Pancreatitis is a medical condition that is defined as the ongoing inflammation in the pancreas that occurs together with autodigestion of the pancreatic tissue, which is a result of erratic activation of the trypsin enzyme with resultant activation of zymogen within the pancreatic tissue. Patients with pancreatitis could even progress to develop a case of severe acute pancreatitis. The commonly used definition among clinicians is that of a severe acute pancreatitis that comes together with failure of multiple body organs along with the development of systemic inflammatory response syndrome. In most patients with acute pancreatitis, the presence of necrotic foci is usually noticed within the tissue of the inflamed pancreas. Located in the retroperitoneum, the pancreas organ is greatly saved from developing injuries due to either environmental factors mechanical factors. Severe cases of acute pancreatitis could have many underlying etiologies with gallbladder stones and alcoholism being the most causes of pancreatitis in most patients. In the vast majority of patients who develop acute pancreatitis, the clinical condition will regress without developing severe complications. On the other hand, in a smaller number of patients, acute pancreatitis could lead to the development of severe and possibly fatal complications with mortality rates that reach up to twenty-five percent. Highest mortality rates are usually found among patients with acute pancreatitis who need to be hospitalized and admitted to the intensive care unit for a period that is more than fourteen days. Aim of work: In this review, we will discuss pancreatitis presentation and management. Methodology: We did a systematic search for pancreatitis presentation and management using PubMed search engine (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) and Google Scholar search engine (https://scholar.google.com). All relevant studies were retrieved and discussed. We only included full articles. Conclusions: Severe acute pancreatitis is associated with significantly high mortality rates. This study is a qualitative review of the recent medical literature. Unfortunately, it is difficult to encompass the whole amount of knowledge over such topic of severe acute pancreatitis in the literature. We have included the relatively more influential studies in this review based on our inclusion criteria. Severe acute pancreatitis remains to be a subject of grey areas in its surgical management albeit new studies have been recorded since the origin of the latest UK guidelines for management of acute pancreatitis and severe acute pancreatitis. We do encourage the conduction of furthermore recent studies in this surgical topic with an aim to further reduce the associated mortality with severe acute pancreatitis.