Olivier Windisch, Claudia-Paula Heidegger, Raphaël Giraud, Philippe Morel, Léo Bühler
Abstract
This review article analyzes, through a nonsystematic approach, the pathophysiology of acute pancreatitis (AP) with a focus on the effects of thoracic epidural analgesia (TEA) on the disease. The benefit-risk balance is also discussed. AP has an overall mortality of 1 %, increasing to 30 % in its severe form. The systemic inflammation induces a strong activation of the sympathetic system, with a decrease in the blood flow supply to the gastrointestinal system that can lead to the development of pancreatic necrosis. The current treatment for severe AP is symptomatic and tries to correct the systemic inflammatory response syndrome or the multiorgan dysfunction. Besides the removal of gallstones in biliary pancreatitis, no satisfactory causal treatment exists. TEA is widely used, mainly for its analgesic effect. TEA also induces a targeted sympathectomy in the anesthetized region, which results in splanchnic vasodilatation and an improvement in local microcirculation. Increasing evidence shows benefits of TEA in animal AP: improved splanchnic and pancreatic perfusion, improved pancreatic microcirculation, reduced liver damage, and significantly reduced mortality. Until now, only few clinical studies have been performed on the use of TEA during AP with few available data regarding the effect of TEA on the splanchnic perfusion. Increasing evidence suggests that TEA is a safe procedure and could appear as a new treatment approach for human AP, based on the significant benefits observed in animal studies and safety of use for human. Further clinical studies are required to confirm the clinical benefits observed in animal studies.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 12. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 06 June 2016.
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#3,142,445
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Outputs of similar age from Critical Care
#73
of 101 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,561,164 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 88th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 6,741 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 21.0. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its peers.
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