Acute pancreatitis–can evidence-based guidelines be transferred to an optimized comprehensive treatment program?

Acute pancreatitis is a common cause of hospitalization and has an incidence of about 300 per 1,000,000 inhabitants. A majority of patients with acute pancreatitis have mild disease, with an absence of local and systemic complications [1]. The clinical, translational, and experimental research in the field of acute pancreatitis is enormous and various guidelines exist. The guidelines have improved, and now increasingly use evidence-based grading, although expert opinion is still part of numerous recommendations.

A persistent problem, however, is the uptake of and compliance with these guidelines. For every guideline recommendation, we should need an implementation plan and an audit. This was pointed out in an editorial in the Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology in 2008 [2]. It is reasonable to assume that adherence to existing management recommendations improves clinical outcomes for patients with acute pancreatitis.