Chronic pancreatitis, a painful, debilitating condition, often requires major surgery to remove all or part of the pancreas. Few large studies have evaluated how these patients fare five years or more after their operations. The largest study to date of patients who have had surgery for chronic pancreatitis with follow-up of six years or longer has found that about two-thirds survive after 10 years. However, more than one-fourth of these patients were still using opioids daily for pain.
The study, presented at the Southern Surgical Association 134th annual meeting in December in Palm Beach, Florida, has been published online as an “article in press” in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS).
“After surgical intervention, we, as surgeons, expect that we return these patients back to their normal lives,” said lead study author Gregory C. Wilson, MD, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. “In this study, we have long-term follow-up examining survival and cause of death in these patients well after that surgical period, and what we see is that survival continues to decline even five years out from surgery.”
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